


TMNT ABC IV: Turtles Forever And Ever And Ever

by This_world_of_beautiful_monsters



Series: ABC TMNT [4]
Category: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (IDW Comics), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TV 2012), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - All Media Types
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Attempted Rape/Non-Con, Brainwashed Sex, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, F/F, F/M, Feelings of Abandonment, Gang Rape, Homelessness, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Mind Rape, Implied/Referenced Masturbation, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Medical Experimentation, Memory Alteration, Memory Loss, Menstruation, Mental Illness, Mpreg, Necromancy, Nightmares, Not Based On My Actual Life, Panic Attacks, Self Harm, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide, The mpreg equivalent of having to eat your own aborted fetus to survive, discussions of abortion, hunger, injuries, medical gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-26
Updated: 2021-01-30
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:34:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 26
Words: 82,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28331697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/This_world_of_beautiful_monsters/pseuds/This_world_of_beautiful_monsters
Summary: Stories from various TMNT universes (none of which I own).
Relationships: Alopex/Angel Bridge, Alopex/Karai (TMNT), Alopex/Leonardo (TMNT), Angel/Alopex/Raphael, Casey Jones/Raphael (TMNT), Donatello/Leonardo/Michelangelo/Raphael (TMNT), Donatello/Michelangelo/Raphael/Shredder/Kitsune, Implied Oroku Saki/Hamato Yoshi, Karai/Leonardo (TMNT), Leonardo/Oroku Saki, Michelangelo/Mondo Gecko (TMNT), Michelangelo/Renet Tilley, Non-Consensual Pairings
Series: ABC TMNT [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2013724
Comments: 18
Kudos: 53





	1. Artist

Mikey has always been in love with the idea of creation: of designing elaborate pranks, acting out stories with his trove of stuffed animals, sculpting statues out of mud, weaving culinary magnificence out of literal trash, collecting doodles and sketches on the hidden books in his room.

And of course, painting: that was what great artists like the one he was named after _did,_ didn't they? Mikey has hoarded every half-empty paint set or can he's found over the years; recently he's extended to stealing from art stores, making the not unbelievable argument that it's deserved compensation for helping save the city way too many times.

Paper was scarce in his younger days, reserved for lessons and monochromatic kanji. Mikey quickly got frustrated with the too-small coloring books, and the walls of their home had too many straight lines and deep divots for his taste.

Turning his sleeping brothers into canvases seemed like a good idea at the time.

In the beginning, they would wake up covered in wild, blurry swirls and blobs of paint. Cue the confusion, the occasional panic, the high-speed pursuits, the grumpy showers, the stern words from Splinter and Mikey's solemn promise to never do it again, which no one really believed.

Later came more sharper angles, triangles and circles and stars, flowers and moons and suns, bits of the world above marked on living flesh below. It had to be washed off, of course, but Mikey didn't really mind. The very fact that something so beautiful could exist in his small, ordinary world, even for a shot time, was reward enough (not to mention that the looks on their faces were always amazing).

No one ever figured out how _Mikey,_ of all people, the King of Noisy, could do all this without being heard. Everybody was _sure_ they'd catch him the next time he tried something like that, and everyone was always wrong.

His skill grew over time, until it actually looked rather pretty--not that the others would ever admit it. They may be inhuman monsters living in a sewer drain, but admitting that they might _want_ to be covered in paint was _weird,_ not to mention _girly._

The only time one of his brothers actually agreed to be a canvas was when Mikey was sick from flu at age twelve, the kind of sick that had Splinter quietly working on herbal remedies for hours and confiscating Donnie's dictionary after it starting driving him (and by extension, everybody) into a panic. Leo obediently sat by Mikey's bed and let him paint his shell black, dotted with bright white stars. He refused to wash it off until his brother got better, punching Raph whenever he sniggered.

He was less forgiving a few years later, when the older boys woke up on their sixteenth Mutation Day to find their shells painted with Disney characters.

Despite appearances, Mikey claimed this was not an attempt at an elaborate suicide. "Raph likes animals, so he's Snow White," he explained to April after he showing up at her house, covered in paint and claiming "sanctuary" from his furious family. "Leo likes tea and blue, so he's Alice. Donnie collects a bunch of old cool stuff from topside and he's in love with someone up there--you--so he's Ariel."

He handed her a T-Phone full of pictures and a set of paints. "Can you give me Rapunzel, please?" he begged, turning his shell. "She's an artist like me, and I _love_ her hair." April was charmed, of course, and did her level best.

The older boys had fewer colorful awakenings after Mikey met Leatherhead; now he had a canvas who would obediently sit in good light and let themselves be covered in artwork, not washing for hours or even days at a time. But he would still occasionally leave them a rainbow surprise, to bring a bit of light into their underground world (also, the looks on their faces were amazing every time).

Then the Kraang arrived and there was no Leatherhead, no Splinter to deliver scoldings with a twinkle in his eye, no cheerful furious mornings. There was just Mikey, in a farmhouse with one brother who wouldn't wake up and two others who fought all the time.

He scribbled dark and ugly drawings on the loose paper he found upstairs, desperately seeking an outlet. Mikey locked dreams of revenge on the Shredder away on the page, wild terrors of his loved ones dying, half-mad nightmares in black and red. Then he tucked them under the floorboards, where no one would ever suspect of their existence.

Eventually it wasn't enough. The rage and guilt and grief and crushing fear pressed behind his eyes, pushing on his smile and threatening to warp it into a beast's wild snarl. He needed to do something, something _drastic,_ something that would make everybody sit up and _pay some fucking attention._

A night came when Raph woke up to find his older brother looking decidedly different than he had before. Which is how the whole house woke up to the sound of someone kicking and pounding on a locked bedroom door, of Raph screaming "COME OUT AND FIX THIS YOU CRAZY LITTLE CUNT---"

"Raph, _calm down!"_ April roared, stomping down the hall in her nightgown, hair spilling down her back in a fierce bloody mane. Donnie and Casey staggered out of their own rooms as she dragged him away from Mikey's door. "Whatever he did, there are better ways of handling it than--"

"LOOK!" Raph howled, jabbing his finger into Leo's bathroom. "LOOK WHAT HE FUCKING DID!" But the others were already looking, and had in fact progressed to gaping.

Mikey hadn't dared move Leo to expose his shell, so the paint covered his chest, upper arms, neck, and head instead. He was covered in a swirl of glittering scales, inked out with delicate care. A shining muzzle swooped down over his face, complete with ragged horns swirling at the edges. Fierce blue eyes had been painted over his closed ones, glaring like butane torches.

"Dragon," April breathed. Mikey had turned his brother into a dragon.

And watching the harsh bathroom light flash on his scales, the only word that came to mind was _ethereal._

"Start scrubbing," Raph growled, turning away. "I'm going to get an _axe,_ break that little shit's door down--"

"Raph, wait!" April cried. "This--this wasn't a _prank,"_ she said, waving in the bathroom. "He's trying to say that Leo's like a dragon. That's he...he's _strong,_ he's wise, he's _magical_....that he's going to be okay."

The others stared at her. "No, what it means is that Mikey's a crazy fucking moron who doesn't care about fucking up Leo's breathing or _anything_ as long as he's not bor--"

"She's right." They all spun to see Mikey standing in the doorway of his room, paints staining his hands, gazing at Raph with a level stare. "And I'd _never_ mess with Leo's lungs." His voice was firm to the point of sternness, all hesitation and humor gone. That's not how it _works_ , Raph, you _know_ that."

"He can't clean himself, so you're going to paint on him whenever you damn well please? Is that it?" Donnie cut in, pinning his brother with a glare.

"No, I..." Mikey's shoulders slumped and he looked down at his hands. "I--I'm sorry, I just...I had to. I had to do _something._ Like, give myself _proof_ he was gonna be okay."

"That doesn't make any fucking _sense,"_ Raph growled.

"I _know!"_ Mikey burst out. "I know, okay? But I couldn't just do _nothing_ and..." Tears trickled down his face. "He...he was the only one who _ever_ let me paint on him. I just....I wanted him to _change...._ to be _beautiful...."_

He fell to his knees, sobbing. The others slowly gathered around him, trying to remember the last time they saw Mikey weep, the last time they say Mikey let himself _react_ to the clusterfuck their lives had become.

They held him close and let their tears mix with his own. In the bathroom the dragon slept, patiently waiting for them to cry themselves out and pull back together.

In the end, after lots of tears and talking and some more yelling, they convinced Raph to take a night off. Mikey said he would sit with Leo, let him wear the paint for a while, and clean him up in the morning. Raph was loath to leave Leo's side, but he didn't want to keep seeing that stupid paint, and he was sick of arguing with April about it.

So Mikey sat with Leo as the others shuffled off to bed, holding his big brother's big hand. He talked until the grey light of morning rose in the distance, and kept talking as he cleaned Leo off, telling him about all the beautiful things he would make for his family when they were together again.


	2. Blood

She's running, running as the monsters snap at her heels, hissing commands to each other in that freakish parody of language. April screams at the top of her lungs, but no one hears her, no comes swinging out of the shadows to save her from a fate worth than death.

There's a cold metal hand on her back, freezing her to the core. She's been dragged away no matter how hard she thrashes, cries burning up through her throat--

"GAAH!" April tumbles off the bed, landing on her hands and knees in a tangle of blankets. "Shit shit shit...." For a second she can't remember where she is, and a spurt of panic flashes through her, but then she recognizes the room the Turtles have given her. She's here, with them. She's _safe._

April rises to her feet with a groan--and freezes, feeling something warm and sticky on her legs. She looks down at the mattress, inadvertently stripped of blankets, and the bright red spot at its center.

 _Fuck._ She hadn't managed to have a period since her father was captured--stress or something. She'd been stupid enough to believe that it wouldn't happen until they were reunited, that putting feminine supplies in the turtles' bathroom meant risking embarrassment without any reward. And now...

Now there are frantically pounding footsteps down the hall, and April has a second to register how loud she was screaming before Raph yanks the door open. "Ape, what--" His eyes land on the red spot, then flick to her stained nightgown.

April opens her mouth, but Raph's eyes go wide with terror and confusion before she say anything. "DONNIE!" he howls. "APRIL'S HURT!"

She would have preferred the Kraang.

"No, it's okay..." she says, but Raph's already spinning, glaring at the shadows with wild eyes as sai glimmer in his hands. "Who was it?" he growls, bristling. "Who was the fucker that--"

And _then_ his brothers are crashing into the room. Donnie's in the lead, clutching a medical kit, his eyes wild with fear....only to smooth into confusion, then dawning comprehension, when he sees her bed. One look in her eyes tells April he knows exactly what just happened, and hasn't explained any of the finer notes of female pubescence to his brothers. _Coward._

Leo spins the exact way Raph did, drawing his swords. "We need to check the perimeter," he bark. "They could still be here, we can't let them get away!" Mikey for his part, has thrown his arms around April and burst into panicked tears.

Raph yanks him away by his shell. "Don't just squeeze her, dipshit, ya'll only make it worse!" He smacks an umoving Donnie over the head. "Get to work, genius! Do something!"

"It's not..." Donnie swallows and clutches his kit to his chest protectively. "It's not an injury."

The others freeze, staring at him.

"The fuck do you mean, not an injury? _Look_ at her," Raph growls, gesturing at April's bloodstains. "It's amazing she can still _stand--"_

"I'm on my period," April groans, burying her head in her hands. "It's a...human female thing. No one hurt me or anything."

"So you just start _bleeding_ for no reason?" Leo asks, gaping at her. "That's _insane!"_

"Where is it even _coming_ from?" Mikey asks, peering at April's face anxiously. "Did it start from your eyes and ears or what?"

"No," April says, rubbing her hands over her face. "Look, can you all just please leave? Everything's fine....I'd just like some privacy, okay?"

"Privacy? You've covered in _blood,"_ Raph says. "Shouldn't we get you, like a blood bag or something?"

"Miss O'Neil and Donatello are correct in their assessment," says Splinter, looming in the doorway and looking as awkward as April has ever seen him. "April is no danger, and we should definitely honor her request for privacy."

He manages to meet April's eyes, shuffling ever so slightly. "I noticed a lack of...supplies in the bathroom, and...apologize for not rectifying that beforehand. Would you mind if I fetched some from the store? I had a wife," he adds stiffly, apparently as an explanation for how he's not melting down right now.

"That would be great, thanks," April says, giving a quick little bow.

Together, Donnie and Splinter managed to herd the blank-faced other turtles out of her room and into the kitchen. She can hear Donnie's voice echoing through the Lair, only slightly muffled by the walls and space between them: "When girls like April reach a certain age, they begin what is known as the menstrual cycle...

She buries her face in a pillow and screams.

When April finally emerges from her room, wearing fresh clothes and suitably "kitted out" thanks to Splinter, she hears Leo asking, in all seriousness, "Are you _sure_ you can't cure her?"

"It's not a _disease_ , it's a biological process," Donnie replies, looking very tired. "Any chemical blockers I made would have unforeseen effects on her body, and I'm not playing around with that. The cycle usually stops for women in their forties and fifties--" He cuts off, and they all turn to her.

Mikey speaks first. "So, do you lay eggs?"

April feels herself going very red; Donnie facepalms and Raph gives him a smack on the shell.

"She's _not_ laying eggs, Mikey," Leo says. "It's just a bit of, um....bleeding, remember?" He glances at his feet. "It'll be over in a few days, right, April?"

"Right," she replies, sitting down by Raph, who gives her a look of undisguised sympathy (April heard someone screaming "IT COMES FROM WHERE?!" during Donnie's lecture, and suspects it might have been him. She'd stuffed in her fingers in her ears for the ensuing ten-minute discussion on what a vagina actually did, and how it was distinct from the female urethra).

"But that's so _cool!"_ Mikey cries, face shining with unabashed wonder. April's mouth drops open; of all the potential reactions to this morning's discovery, awe hadn't been one she considered. "You _bleed_ and you don't feel pain? And it doesn't make you sick? That's, like _superpower_ stuff! Do you heal faster, too?"

"No, sorry," she tells him, although now that she thinks about it, that sounds like it should be an obvious trade-off.

"Still pretty cool," Mikey says, bustling over to the stove. "That reminds me, I was gonna make superheroes pancakes today!" The others look a little nauseous, but April finds her stomach growling at the words.

He yanks a jar out of food coloring out of a cupboard and holds it up for her inspection. "Who do you want to be, Wonder Woman or Deadpool?"

"You _can_ eat, right?" Donnie asks, peering at her with an anxious expression. "It's not going to hurt or anything?"

"I'm fine," she says, giving them all a reassuring smile. And then, maybe because she's focused on her stomach or still sleepy or just displaying an unusual tendency for stupidity this morning, she adds: "I usually don't get cramps until a few days in."

" _Cramps?"_ three turtles chorus.

Donnie and April let out twin groans.


	3. Cold

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Makes references to ABC II: "Prey," and ABC III: "Underwater." It'll be probably make a bit more sense if you read those first.

In the beginning, her world was warm. Curled up in a furry bundle of uncles and aunts and siblings and parents, she always felt cozy and safe. When she left home, she always made sure to run as fast as possible, so that her blood was hot and buzzing no matter how much snow had fallen.

Then one day the men came for her, human men with cold metal poles and cold rubber fingers, leaving bruises under her fur. They snatched her away from family and tossed into a cage, brought her to a lab where everything was hard, scary, and _freezing._

She doesn't know how long she was in that lab, how many times they pricked her with vicious needles that pumped her full of poison. She does know that a lot of the time the injections only made her sick, made her heart hurt, filled her eyes with buzzing sparks.

She knows that a lot of animals were also brought to that place, only to be reduced to crying, twisted lumps, horrors that would haunt her nightmares for years to come. She knows that she was the program's only success, and probably the only survivor.

Mutation came upon her slowly. All of a sudden, she realized that she noticed time passing, that she was able to get bored. She realized that her cage seemed to grow rapidly smaller even as they kept moving her to bigger ones, that the scientists seemed very excited when they put her on or held her up against the cold metal things that she realized were scales and measuring tapes.

One of the most terrifying days came when they strapped her on her back and stuck something between her legs, gazing at her with an air of unabashed wonder. She looked down on herself and realized that the precious nipples that she was supposed to use to feed her young were almost gone, reduced to two paltry ones on her upper chest that were covered in fur.

She let out a sound that she would only recognize later as a sob, one that produced an ecstatic flurry of notes.

They stroked a place between her legs and her body vibrated with a strange, impossible pleasure. She'd touch that place afterwards, huddled in her cell. Sometimes the scientists passing by would look at her with what she was starting to recognize as scorn, and a few of them with what she started to suspect was lust.

After they started the language recognition tests, one of the scientists apparently decided that made her human enough to fuck. He waited until they were alone and she was strapped down after another test to climb on top of her and start touching her body.

For a few seconds she thought about going along with out, out of curiosity. But his eyes were too cold and hungry, as if he was about to devour a meal rather than a being. "Stop," she told him, her voice guttural and raspy. He pulled on a glove and clamped her muzzle shut.

So she ripped free and bit his fingers. Then she twisted out of her restraints, the ones that hadn't been designed with strength in mind, and lunged. _Prey prey prey,_ her mind screamed, a glorious song she hadn't heard in months.

They found her kneeling over his body, slicked with blood, her mouth full of flesh. To her surprise, she'd thrown up when she tried to swallow, and that kept her still long enough for them to fill her with tranquilizers.

When she woke up, she'd been scrubbed clean and left in her cage. There was a man looking in on her, a man with a scar on his face and long black hair tied in a ponytail. His eyes were also cold, but not in the way the scientist's had been. This was a _dangerous_ cold, a cold that made her think of bears instead of rabbits.

"Stand," he told her.

She felt her face twitching into what she later learned was called a frown. She rose to her legs.

"No," he gestured to himself. "Like this."

She cocked her head. There was an urge to resist, but something told her that if she couldn't prove herself to this man, he would be perfectly happy to dispose of her.

So she reached out and, grabbed hold of the bars, carefully hauled herself upright. Her muscles throbbed as she slowly ground them into a new position, rising upright. Then she let go, swaying slightly as she adjusted herself to the new position.

She lifted her chin and met his eyes, feeling a flicker of defiance rise in her.

He nodded, seeming satisfied. "My name is Oroku Saki," he said. "I am your new master." _Master._ That was one of the words they'd been teaching her, a word associated with "leader" and "pack." And by extension, maybe "warm," "safe," and "family."

Saki opened the door and swung it open. "Your name is Alopex," he told. "It is taken from the Latin term for your species."

 _Alopex._ She'd had a name before that, a name written entirely in pheromones that no human tongue could recapture even if they wanted to, and this tongue didn't seem to want to.

Alopex....she wasn't sure if it fit her. But she looked down at herself, and knew that she could never fit into her old family again. Maybe, though....she could fit into this one. Maybe.

When Oroku Saki held out his hand, she took it.

There were rides by limousine and helicopter, where the newly christened Alopex was told about Foot Clans and ninjitsu and given a glimpse into the checkered history of the man known as the Shredder. She had to interrupt the lecture to be sick out of the window of both vehicles; the Shredder watched in silence, without castigation or comfort.

Alopex received a room at Foot headquarters, a bare little cell that felt far too large after a lifetime of cages and caves. It was cold, too, but she was used to that by now.

There were lessons in English and Japanese, tutoring in mathematics and geography. She was struck or had food withheld whenever she stopped paying attention or tried to bite the teacher.

Most of her hours were spent in the dojo, learning to fight from a human woman who introduced herself as Oroku Karai. Karai was even harsher than her other instructors, and whenever she looked at Alopex she didn't even bother to hide her contempt. For a while Alopex hated her...until the day she was ordered to sit by and watch as Karai's grandfather destroyed her on the training mats.

She'd never like Karai, but she started to understand her. In Karai's world--maybe in all worlds--cruelty and control were just synonyms for honor.

Eventually, Alopex was given pieces to wear, since they weren't willing to make custom clothing that would be too constricting and no doubt destroyed on mission. She was shown into a room of weapons and told to take her pick. She chose the kama, like the way they glittered, like her mother's teeth had as she fought off threats.

During her rare few moments, she ate her (usually stolen, she hated the Foot cafeteria) meals on ledges, watching the city bustle below. She dug some books and comics out of garbage bins, teaching herself a little bit more about the strange human she'd found herself in.

She progressed quickly on her lessons, and was soon sent on her first mission. She was told to think of her targets as prey, so that was what she did (the crushing guilt would come later)

Alopex watched blood run down her paws, hot and heavy. When it dried off she felt colder than before.

The turtle's name was Raphael, and once he was just another target. Alopex always tuned out the Shredder's rants about the Hamatos; she was here to hunt, not play psychiatrist.

She followed him Raphael the streets of New York, watching him jump into matters where he had no business, stopping fights and muggings. She watched him pull a man in a police uniform away from a woman pinned against the wall, wondering why the woman hadn't ripped the man's throat out the way Alopex had with the scientist.

Alopex told Karai about her failure to track the turtle down, and the woman started laying out a plan to capture Raphael and torture him into giving his family's location. Alopex tried not to wince--she hated the idea of dragging out a kill.

Maybe that was why the idea, which should have been locked behind her teeth with all the others, somehow slipped out. "If I may interject..." she said.

Karai's eyes snapped to her, and Alopex forced herself to not flinch. _"What?"_

"The turtle fancies himself a vigilante," Alopex says, fighting to keep her voice level. "He likes to save people--like Batman, and just as pretentious." She'd found a Batman comic the other day, and had been perhaps unreasonably bitter at the character for not being an actual mutant bat.

"We could give him a victim to save...." she gestured to herself. "A helpless little mutant girl, in desperate need of refuge..." Karai started to nod, and together they pieced out a plan, involving a few new recruits who could stand some bodily harm and a careful study of the turtle's nighttime route.

It was, to be frank, an utter clusterfuck.

Things were going so _well,_ too--or she thought it had. He'd been carrying her through the sky, unfortunately blindfolded, and the process hadn't been as frightening as it feared. It had actually been kind of...nice, resting so snug against his chest, knowing that he probably wouldn't hurt her and she could stop him if he tried.

Even though he was supposed to be cold-blooded, his body had felt surprisingly warm in the chilly New York night air. Not to mention muscular, now that she about it...but wait, she wasn't thinking about it.

And then he'd chucked her off a building; not so Batman after all, apparently. They'd fought, and she'd decided to cut her losses and bolt while the bolting was good.

The one saving grace for that night was that Karai had taken all of the credit for the idea, of course. So Shredder ended up beating the shit out of _both_ of them instead.

Afterwards, dabbing at her split lit alone in her room, Alopex had decided that one day she would kill Raphael. And thus, her war with the Hamato family began in earnest.

"He wants to replace me with Leonardo," Karai muttered, smacking the mattress angrily.

"Who?" Alopex asked, surprised at the very idea of starting pillow talk. Their relationship was a purely physical one, fueled by booze, Alopex's desperate desire to know more about her relatively new vagina, and Karai's weird ability to be both repulsed by and attracted to the same individual.

"My grandfather, imbecile," Karai said.

"I _know_ that," Alopex said, reminding herself to give Karai an "accidental" nibble for that later. "What I mean is, who's Leonardo?"

"The leader of the turtles," Karai groaned, leaning back against the pillow.

Alopex blinked. "The blue one in swords, right?" It was taking some time for her to get all the colors and weapons straight, especially since they were practically identical--except for Raphael. She could pick out Raphael from a mile away.

"He defeated me in combat, and now Grandfather has some insane idea of making him _chunin."_

Alopex frowned. "Shredder dropped him off a roof....and he thinks he's going to work for us?"

"Insane," Karai muttered, running a hand through her hair with a rueful expression.

"So how come you're still worked up about this?" Alopex asked.

"Because if that self-righteous little _freak_ is somehow more appealing to Grandfather than _me,_ than I must be something _wrong,"_ Karai said, punctuating each word with a finger jabbed at the ceiling.

"Or maybe it's just the fact that Leonardo's a boy, and you're a girl, and men like Shredder usually want boys to succeed them," Alopex said. That was how it usually went in the books she'd been reading, anyway.

Karai sniffed. "Don't be ridiculous. _He's_ not like that."

"Whatever," Alopex muttered, pressing up against her. She was already getting bored of the subject; it wasn't like Shredder would ever _get_ anywhere with this. There was no reason that anything in the clan that had become her life had to change.

After a moment, Karai sighed and wrapped her arms around Alopex. She wasn't very warm, but she could make her feel good, at least, and Alopex decided that was enough (even if she did sometimes wake up sweaty from dreams of Raphael).

The next day, Saki was introducing Kitsune into them. Alopex peered into her dark eyes and wondered what she was, exactly, and whether Shredder wanted to fuck with her.

She didn't feel a flash of premonition while looking at the woman who would one day try to destroy her. Alopex wasn't afraid in the least; she feared no human, except for maybe the Shredder.

Her life was good, she thought. Not perfect, not exactly, but she had a purpose in life, she was strong and getting stronger. She hasn't a master who had never tried to take advantage of her, she was permitted to fight off the men who did, she had someone to fuck even if she didn't quite have someone to love. Love was probably too much for a freak to expect, after all.

And then....

And then.

After the fire, everything was cold.

Alopex sat in the back of the helicopter, holding ice to her throbbing wounds and clenching her teeth so they wouldn't chatter. She stared at Oroku Saki and wondered what color his face would turn when she ripped out his entrails.

It had all come back, when she returned home. She had remembered how to read the scents, how to distinguish _prey_ and _predator,_ _safe_ and _unsafe._ She had remembered _mother_ and _father_ , _brother_ and _sister_ , _aunt_ and _uncle_ and _cousin._ Their scents were like writing on the wind, little notes they'd for her, flashes of memory and love.

She'd been making plans to return on occasion, after the Hamatos had been defeated and she had more time to slip away from her duties. She could watch her relatives as they lived and loved, maybe try to protect them from the bears. Maybe....maybe she could go to them, at least for a while, try to speak to them in her old language of barks and growls, scent and ruffled fur.

Alopex was trying to remember some of the words when she smelled smoke.

The scents had been all been burned out of her nose by now; she didn't even have to soothe her pain. Her lunges rasped with smoke whenever she breathed, and she was _cold cold_ _ **cold.**_

Did Saki even realize what he'd done? she wondered. The extent of the ecosystem, billions of years in the making, that he'd destroyed? She doubted that he would care if she did.

He started to raise his head and Alopex quickly looked down, making sure to lower to her ears a little. She needed to look as defeated as possible, as she if she'd learned something from his sadistic "initiation."

And she had. Just not what he was hoping to teach.

Oroku Saki was her enemy now, but things hadn't changed with the turtles. The plan had been to help him dispose of them, then take him down when he was distracted, lost in his greatest triumph.

That was the plan.

And then Leonardo was being wheeled through the halls, looking so small behind the restraints on his gurney. As small as Alopex had felt, once.

He did not scream after he was sent into Kitsune's room. But he cried, and that was worse. Alopex heard him as she was walking by, and could not find the strength to walk away. Her sensitive ears stayed pricked, ringing with the sound of someone sobbing like their heart had broken.

When Leonardo came out of the room, he was wearing black and there was something so _wrong_ about the way he moved. Alopex barely knew him, but she knew how people were supposed to move, and she knew she wasn't supposed to feel nauseous watching them.

As they fought his family, Alopex couldn't help noticing how blank Leonardo's--Leo, the name his brothers screamed was Leo--eyes looked. Like he didn't recognize them. Like he _couldn't_ recognize them.

Her suspicions was confirmed after the fight, when Leo's hands started to shake and the Shredder pulled him into a tight hug. Alopex almost choked on her tongue at the sight.

"It's all right," Saki had whispered, stroking his head. "You'll avenge your brothers next time." Leo looked up, his eyes full of love and loyalty and a desperate need for approval, and Alopex had had to physically force the bile back down.

Would that have been her if she hadn't been better at hiding her feelings? Would she be blaming Splinter for what happened to her family, would she be the one frantically seeking Shredder's love the way Leo did?

Could it still end up being her?

She gritted her teeth and turned away, refused to look at Leo for too long. She didn't care about him. She _didn't,_ anymore than she cared about Raph.

Alopex kept telling herself that right up until the day she was called into the Shredder's private chambers, to find him waiting there with Leo. Even before he started babbling about testing "loyalty" and "vitality," she knew what they would be expected to do.

She looked into Leo's dead eyes and knew that there was no way in hell he would consent to this if he had a smidgen of control over his own body. Probably not with her, and definitely not with Shredder _watching._ Alopex didn't want to do it, either. The very thought made her fur crawl.

But Saki was giving a very significant look, and Alopex knew that if she didn't play along she would end up dead if she was lucky, and like Leo if she wasn't. So she silently shrugged out of her clothes before lying down.

The room was cold. The bed was colder.

She could see bruises on Leo's body as he stripped, triggering suspicions that she wasn't able to think about until he confirmed them later. Then they were together, and Alopex was making all the noises and movements Shredder expected her to make.

 _Just pretend it's Raphael,_ she ordered herself. But then it was _Raphael_ who was looking down on her with those blank white eyes, and she was trying her hardest not to be sick all over them both.

She lost herself somewhere before the end. Then she was standing in the shower attached to her own room, vibrating with quiet sobs. She'd just _performed_ for that monster, and she'd done something unspeakable to a boy who had no means of consent.

Alopex stopped kidding herself. There could be no waiting, no planning. She wouldn't be able to hold back long enough for that.

So that last night in the auditorium, when Leo was breaking down under the weight of Raphael's words and Shredder was screaming about _family_ as if he knew the first thing about, Alopex couldn't hold back anymore. She let the roar explode out of her like a tsunami, tearing at Shredder with claws and teeth and words.

"ALL YOU DO IS _KILL_ AND _DESTROY!"_ she screamed. He'd destroyed her family, destroyed her home, destroyed who she and Leonardo used to be. They were _ruined_ because of him, and they would never get better, not really.

Shredder was shocked at the attack from a girl he'd thought he'd broken. He was off-balance for once, and Alopex _knows_ she could have killed him....if Karai hadn't shot her first. That fucking _bitch._

So Alopex dashed off into the dark, tossing a middle finger over her shoulder as she ran. She would die as she was, injured and alone, which was why she found herself leaping onto the Hamato van.

If they killed her, at least she would die at the hands of people who had a _right_ to take her life.

She hadn't expected Leo to defend her. She'd expected the opposite, really--for him to point a finger at her and say: _She let me be brainwashed. She practically raped me. She deserves whatever you want to do._

Instead, he'd stood up for her. And when Raphael had suggested it might be about residual _loyalty_ to Shredder, well...the only reason Alopex didn't rip out his throat was that Leo got to him first.

Splinter calmed them down, sort of, and Alopex went to keep an eye on Leo, half expecting to find him with a sword in his stomach whenever she stopped to hunt or relieve herself.

That night, she talked with Raphael a little, gave him a small glimpse of the hell she and his brother had both been consigned to. She would never tell him the full truth. If she did, he might kill her, and she might let him.

He seemed to relent, a little, giving her a hot dog as a peace offering. The next morning, she watched him do tai chi, graceful and serene in a way she never imagined possible from him. They talked, and talking turn to flirtation. She liked how it felt to pin him down, to know that he was letting her pin him, and then she hated herself for liking it because what right did she have to like anything?

Later, she made herself talk to Leo, as a kind of penance if nothing else. That was how she learned the full extent of what he'd suffered at Shredder's hands.

They wept together, because there was nothing else they could do. Then Leo promised her that he was okay, and Alopex tried to believe him. She went back to the barn, where she started making plans with the others, trying not to think of how she had used to make plans with Karai or drive herself nuts wondering whether the local humans were the trigger-happy type.

When Koya crashed through the ceiling, Alopex panicked. She ran--whether out of a cowardly need to save herself or to lead them away from the others, she wasn't sure. Raph chased her down, and she got a little distracted trying to keep him from cutting her throat yet _again..._ but not too distracted to keep from feeling relieved at the sight of Leo emerging from the forest, blue mask restored.

And not too distracted to notice that he was dripping with river water.

After the others left, she went back to the river and found the bag of stones buried at the bottom. For a second, she considered slipping back it. But she didn't, same way she hadn't ended herself after her body was warped against her will, after her family died, after everything she'd done and been forced to do.

There was an iron core in her, one that wouldn't break no matter how much she suffered. No matter how much she wanted it to, sometimes.

Instead she climbed out of the water and sat by the bank, shivering in the cold. She prayed to her family's spirits that everything would be okay, that the turtles would be safe, that even if things were never good they'd at least get better. Because they couldn't get _worse_ , right?

If she'd read more books, she'd have known in advance how wrong she was.

For a while Alopex let herself melt back into the forest, learning or relearning the sights and sounds of animal life. She considered letting herself slip back into nothingness, having the beast take over for good.

Before she could really force herself into it, there was a sudden compulsion leading her back to New York. It hadn't felt like a compulsion at the time, of course (anymore than it had probably felt like a compulsion for Leo when _he_ was Kitsune's toy).

So she headed back to New York and the endless clusterfuck of the turtles' lives, which was when she met Angel Bridge.

Angel was a modern day samurai in her high-tech purple armor, cutting through the streets like a blade. She was also someone who

\- cursed in two separate languages

\- had no idea what she was going to be when she grew up and didn't really care

\- had dyslexia and didn't mind who figured it out

\- knew engines like the back of her hand

\- lit a candle for her mother's soul in the church for every holiday she missed

\- and was the most beautiful girl Alopex had ever seen.

She was beautiful the way Raph was beautiful, the way a blazing sun or a candle in the dark was beautiful. When she looked at Alopex, there was no fear or contempt in her eyes, just calm acceptance. The few times she touched Angel's skin, Alopex felt warmer than she had since the fire.

For a while, friendship was all she could manage with her, or with Raph. To begin with, as wonderful as Angel was Alopex still had feeling for Raph, which was just _weird_ , even for a mutant. Not to mention that all her experiences with romance were loveless or worse; she didn't really know _how_ to love.

She muddled through it all as best she could, while at the same time throwing herself into the war against the man who had created her and then destroyed her. Maybe when Oroku Saki was dead, things would become clearer.

Things did not become clearer when Oroku Saki was dead.

Oh, it was fine at the beginning. Watching his severed head dribble blood across the rooftop was one of the most pleasant experiences in Alopex's memory. She dipped a toe in the red when no one was looking, and felt gratified by how nice and warm it was.

But then Michelangelo left, for no reason Alopex could see. "Didn't he want Shredder gone?" she asked Raph later.

He shrugged. "Mikey's not used to the violent stuff, I guess. He's one of those people who still believe in carting the bad guys off to jail, like superheroes do with their villains." He glanced down at his hands. "But...but I think what really kicked him over the edge was Splinter taking over the Foot Clan."

Alopex nodded. It _was_ strange being back in her old room, even though Angel had started a campaign to decorate it. She was expected to fight alongside the very people who tried to kill her; the only thing weirder than that was how well they were all adjusting to it.

All except for Jennika, of course. When she tried to kill Splinter, Alopex was _sure_ they would execute her, or at the very least exile her. But instead Splinter decided to kick off some kind of bizarre rehabilitation, roping them all into Making Jennika Sane Again.

Alopex was, well....she thought it was kind of stupid. But she also had to admit the Shredder would never have been capable of that kind of mercy; the idea that Splinter was was comforting, in its way. Still, she made sure to keep an ear or a nose at Jennika as much as she could.

Still, she had no inkling of the plans Splinter made to use Harold Lillja as bait in his war with the Street Phantoms, or the execution of Darius Dun. And she certainly had no idea of how those events would blow the Hamato family apart.

Just like that, she was alone in Foot headquarters all over again, without even Karai to share a bad. It wasn't all bad--she could still hang out with her friends, still awkwardly flirt with Angel or Raph while they flirted with each other, still have the occasional stilted conversation with Leo as they tried to work out their experiences--but she was still alone a lot of the time.

She went on missions for Splinter and reassured herself that she wasn't expected to kill anyone. She told herself that Splinter was a good man trying his best, that even after everything that had changed the Foot was still the closest thing she had to a family.

Then she went home, to sleep in her cold little room.

Only instead of sleeping, she found herself wandering into Kitsune's room instead.

Everything about Kitsune was cold. Her eyes, her slender fingers as she took tea from Alopex's hands, her smoothly accented voice. She made Alopex tell her things, examining the contents of her heart and mind with the same icy dispassion scientists had once used to examine her body.

But there was something....pleasant about how the cold froze and numbed her, left her strong and smooth as an ice statue. When she was with Kitsune, nothing mattered. There was no pain, no fear, no worry or confusion, no guilt or grief. There was just a little fox, kneeling before a big fox and obediently receiving her instructions.

Kitsune wasn't trying to break or twist her, the way she had Leo. She was trying to _erase_ her out completely, freeze her and break into pieces and sweep the pieces away.

Gaps appeared in Alopex's memory, gaps so small she barely noticed them first. She'd find herself staring into space during conversations, peering at nothing. Angel and Raph were worried, asking over and over again if anything was wrong. She told them nothing was. They kept worrying, but they din't investigate fast enough, had no idea how quickly they were running out of time.

Leo thought he knew what was going on; he told her about his own flashbacks and struggles with blank spaces. He suggested taking up meditation--it didn't help _that_ much, but it gave you an excuse to disappear into your room and vanish into your own head, escape from everything.

For a while, she thought that was what was happening. Of course, meditating just left her more vulnerable to the devil down the hall, but Leo didn't know that. Not even Alopex knew it, until the night Kitsune called her into her room and jammed icy nails into her brain.

It _hurt._ It hurt like nothing she'd ever felt, worse than knives and needles, worse than cracked ribs in the dojo or arrow to the knee or fire in her throat. It was all that pain rolled into one and amplified by a thousand. It was a sword, designed to break her into nothing so she could be rebuilt, and that was exactly what it did.

Then she was standing in a bitter white forest, air puffing out of her throat like needles. It was cold, so cold, but she couldn't shiver for fear of showing weakness.

The bears were slinking out of the shadows, mouths full of needles and claws scraping the ground like swords. Their eyes were all wrong, an ugly kaleidoscope of yellow and red and blue and orange and purple, looking at her body with similar expressions of hunger and lust.

"Consider yourself unleashed," a voice said. It was Mistress Kitsune, her fellow fox, the only one who could protect her in this terrible world. Alopex growled and set to work, summoning all the lessons she'd learned in the dojo and the wild.

The world dissolved into steel and blood. She was fighting with a blond girl who was also a furious bear, their blades clacking and clanking as incomprehensible babbles drove into her ears. People were screaming at her, trying and failing to call her home.

A red-haired women lifted a feather and chanted a ridiculous rhyme, breaking Kitsune's power, at least for a few heartbeats. In some realities this might have been enough to set Alopex free, but in this one her mind was full of fire and screaming, too damaged to pull itself back together without help.

She followed her mistress away, curled up at her feet in the back of a helicopter. The coffin containing Oroku Saki's body pressed against her back, freezing cold.

Raph found her and fucked her back to sanity. You can't love someone back to mental health, but occasionally an orgasm of true love can break a spell. Or something.;

She thought about killing herself this time, went so far as balancing herself at the edge of the roof. If she knew how to survive a fall, than _not_ surviving it would be even easier.

But she didn't know how far Kitsune's powers extended, didn't know if she would be brought back the way Kitsune planned to do to Saki. If she gave Kitsune the smallest chance of finding body, she might end up coming back as an obedient little zombie.

So she did the only thing she can think of: go home. She headed back to the dead forest; whether to find herself again or die in a proper resting place, she doesn't know.

Kitsune's voice scraped at the inside of her skull as she fled north. Alopex didn't know if it was real or imaginary, didn't know if she'd ever stop hearing it. She scratched her arms with teeth and claws, letting the hot flashes of pain remind her that she was still _here_ , still herself, still in control.

Her old home is so very cold, and there are no foxes in sight, even if the forests aren't quite as ruined as they were when she left. She can still smell smoke, even though she knows that's impossible. She'll hear growls and howls in the distance where there are none.

This time, she decides, she'll lose herself. The human side of her has brought nothing, but pain to Alopex and everyone she loves. She still remembers enough about the forest to survive in it, to find the proper food to eat when everything seems buried in snow. She tries to teach herself to walk on four legs again, to think in pheromones and barks.

It doesn't work. She can feel them coming, Angel and Raph, her beautiful purple samurai and her fierce red ninja. She tries to run away, to bury herself in the freezing snow. They're not safe with her, _no one_ is safe with her.

Then Kitsune's voice is splitting her again, whispering that terrible word: _initiation._ The bear is pinning her, ready to chew up her soul and swallow it, leaving just a shell for the monsters to play with.

" _Get away from me!"_ she screams, twisting and writhing in the snow. _"Get the fuck away!"_ She doesn't know where she is, doesn't know which level of reality she's on. All she knows is it's _cold_ , so cold she's sobbing from it.

 **You belong to me, little fox,** Kitsune says, her voice everywhere and nowhere at once. **You destroy everything you touch. If you go back to them, they will die, and it will be _your_ fault.**

"Shut up," she whispers, screaming and scratching with her weak useless claws. Her voice builds to a roar: "SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP!"

 **Why? Haven't you had enough of deceptions?** **This,** the bear's claws squeeze her head and Alopex sees the scientist with his throat ripped out, sees a heap of corpses she can barely tell apart, sees her family burning alive, sees Leo's blank face as she fucks him mechanically, sees Jennika bleeding and bruised, sees Raph looking so scared in that alleyway.

"No," she whispers, shaking her head wildly. "No, I won't, I'll never, you fucking _bitch..."_

 **Isn't this why you came out here, then?** Kitsune/the bear asks, eyes twinkling with amusement. **To lose yourself, the way you deserve?**

"No, I don't..." She doesn't deserve to exist--does she?--but she doesn't want to belong to Kitsune either, and she _will_ belong to Kitsune if she stops existing...but she's not safe as she is....but she's not safe as what Kitsune will make when she stops existing...and everything hurts.....and she just needs to _breathe_ but the bear is about to _rip her apart_ the way bears always do....

"Alopex!" It's Raph, staggering through the astral plane, face narrowed in concentration as a very confused-looking Angel clings to his arm for dear life. "Alopex!"

"Get the fuck away from her, _puta,"_ Angel spits, arm cannon charging at her side.

 **Oh, look,** Kitsune muses. **It's two filthy little brats come to mess with their betters. Tell me,** **d** **o you have any inkling of what this little bitch has done for me?**

The world ripples, and then all the terrible images in Alopex's head fill the void around them instead. Angel and Raph stagger backward, eyes going wide with shock.

 **That's right** , Kitsune coos. Her paws wrap around Alopex's throat, slicing through her fur as they slowly, steadily choke the life out of her.

She whispers in Alopex's ear, a giggle ringing painfully through her skull. **Give in, little girl. Then after I've made you mine you can tear those two freaks apart....**

A sai whistles out of nowhere, burning with red fire, and slams into Kitsune's arms. She rips it off with a growl, but Alopex can still feel its heat on her face, racing through the ice in her bones.

"Get away from her," Raph hisses, red mask burning as it snaps around his head. "It doesn't matter what you made her do."

His gaze shifts off to Alopex. "You're not a monster, Al. You're a _warrior,_ you're a _survivor,_ you kick _serious ass_ , and you're coming _home."_

 **She belongs to me,** Kitsune snarls, slamming Alopex down again.

"She belongs to no one," Angel growls, firing a shot from her cannon that sends the great bear rocking.

 **Imbeciles!** Kitsune roars, sending them both tumbling. She shoves Alopex deeper into the snow, grinding her down into nothingness. **If they want _you_ back they must be even stupider than I thought.**

But Alopex isn't listen anymore, because she can hear Angel and Raph screaming as the mist boils around them. Kitsune is here to destroy them, to ruin them the Alopex has been ruined so many times.

And whatever she's done, whatever she's been turned into, Alopex is not someone to let things like that happen. Not anymore.

She _screams_ , a pure burning roar of unholy fur, as her teeth sink into the bear's paw. The beast's hand spasms wildly and Alopex twists free, scrambling up her back with fierce angry claws.

 **You will never--** But Alopex keeps screaming, drowning out Kitsune's voice as she straddles the bear's back. Her kamas fly into her hands, gleaming the way her mother's teeth did so long ago, and she keeps screaming as she cuts the bear's throat.

Blood spurts into the air and Kitsune _roars,_ splitting her soul open yet again. Alopex roars back, and Angel and Raph join in, their voices making the trees shake.

Then the bear is gone and she's alone, falling to her knees in the snow. For a minute she's huddled there in the snow, alone, and for a few terrible seconds she wonders if it was all a dream, a last desperate flicker from her insane brain.

But they're coming for her, sprinting across the snow with desperate panic in the eyes. There are hands on her body now, warm lips on her face, the rustle of snow being frantically brushed away as her name is whispered over and over again.

She can't stop shaking.

They have to carry her back to the helicopter, passing back and forth between as they walk. She throws up out the window as they take off, the wind tearing at her fur, and they rub at her back comfortingly.

"Sorry," they whisper, tears choking their voices. She tries to tell them there's nothing to apologize for, but her teeth are chattering too hard to speak, and she can't grit them into stillness anymore.

Angel strokes Alopex's head as it lies in her lap, whispering prayers to the virgin, while Raph speaks to his brothers on the phone. Then she's talking to Leo, and he asks her how she feels.

"Cold," she forces out. "So cold." Her head is fall of shards of broken glass.

"We can make you warm again," he promises. "We're your friends, Alopex. We're your _family."_ Are they? She's never considered the possibility before, but....who else, but family would accept her after everything? Who else, but family would face a monster to keep her safe, would forgive her for trying to kill them so many times?

"Okay," she says, and then her teeth are chattering some more, stealing her words away

From a distance, she thinks she's being smuggled into Angel's apartment and placed on her bed. She begs to be held, to be touched, and that's what they give her. She asks them to love her, and they do. She asks them to _talk_ to her, not just give her orders or meaningless questions, and they do.

Angel tells her about what it felt like to watch a car roll past with her mother's body bleeding on the windshield, what it's like to be a little brown girl in a city that eats little brown girls alive. Raph tells her about what it's like to be alone and desperate to be the street, what it's like to be a freak of nature in a world that eats freaks of nature alive. They tell she's not the only to have done monstrous things and still be capable of redemption.

Alopex lets herself melt into the rich stew of their voices, into the soft nest of their brown and green limbs. She's back in a heap like the ones she's shared with her birth family, and it warms her in a way that a forest fire never could.

For the first time in a very long time, she doesn't feel cold at all.


	4. Duel

_Something's wrong._

It's a whisper at the back of Shinigami's head, the voices of countless dead women compressed into one.

_Something's happened._

The sensation ripples through the skin of Mother Earth, up past Shini's boots and into her bones.

 _Something's--_ The voice splinters into a blur of images, white eyes black eyes dead eyes no fish. _Invader rapacious threat fallen star too hot to touch bad bad bad._ Shini hisses, pressing a palm to her temple.

"You okay?" Karai asks, peering at her in concern. The light through the apartment window glitters gold in her beautiful black hair, making her eyes sparkle.

"I'm fine," Shini says, forcing a smile. Karai's a trained kuniochi, sure to see through any of her bullshit, but Shini's already putting a comforting hand on her shoulder and tracing a sigil rapid-fire on her bare skin. Karai's eyes roll up in her head and Shini catches her as she slumps back, lowering her gently onto the couch.

Magic always works best on someone who trusts you.

"Sorry, love," she whispers, planting a kiss on Karai's forehead. She doesn't know if Karai when Karai will forgive her with this, if ever (she's been sedated far too often in her life as it is) but right now Shini simple doesn't have time to care.

The voices are rising to a painful buzz now, whispering _bad big dangerous like nothing we've ever seen._ She's hearing from the ghosts of women who haven't spoken to her in years, maybe even decades.

If she doesn't deal with this _now_ , there might not be a Karai left to argue with later. Or a planet to argue on.

Shini yanks up her sleeves and plucks a ceremonial knife from her pocket. She starts scratching into her arm, forming the glyphs of the first spell that comes to mind, a spell that her grandmothers all consider worthy of this kind of threat. She chants as she works, rocking back and forth slightly.

As soon as she's done she's off and running, tearing across New York's rooftops. She doesn't know the city all that well, but the buzzing in her head guides her like a magnet. While she runs Shini extends her arms like a strange black bird, letting blood drip from her flesh to sink into the stone, concrete, water, and dirt of New York City.

 _Not enough,_ her grandmothers hiss. _You need more power._ Shini lets out a growl of frustration and rips the hypnotizing stone between her neck, whispering the spell that crushes it to dust between her fingers and rubbing it into her cuts. Stings like a motherfucker, and she'll miss that stone, but she has to trust the grandmothers on this, this demon like nothing she's ever encountered in the wilds of Japan.

This..... _Za-Naron._

She skids to a halt at a rooftop's edge, gazing at the bizarre scene as she tugs bandages over her cuts. The turtles are all there, too, and really, why should she surprised? Hovering above them is--Shinigami blinks. April O'Neil.

Only it's _not_ April O'Neil, not the cute little redhead who wanted to be a kuniochi and just happened to be able to blow shit up with her mind. Shini can see that even without the grandmothers screaming in her ear; April's eyes are glowing a merciless white, her hair is streaming upward _Dragon Ball_ style, and that crystal she was (the one Shini thought was just an _amplifier,_ how could she be so _stupid)_ is rising off her chest in a very un-necklace-like manner.

The _necklace_ is her enemy. She's no psychic, but she is a daughter of the earth, and she feel how every atom of the natural world is doing its level best to shy away from it. Shini looks at April with eyes that can see the secret parts of reality and finds a twisting, burning blob, suffocated by the dark parasite at its heart.

Shini can also see the turtle Donatello--"Why are they all named after Italians if they're Japanese?" she'd asked Karai, and received a blank stare--hovering in the air below April, screaming something she can't hear. Whatever he's saying, the April-thing doesn't like it very much, because she closes her fist and he's disintegrated.

Just.

Like.

That.

The screams of his brothers and friend ring up from the street, earth-shattering cries of horror and pain. Shini claps her hand to her mouth, and for a cowardly moment she almost feels the urge to turn and run. Whatever's done there is _certainly_ not April, and it has power like she's never seen.

But she shoves the fear away and forces herself to descend to street level, leaping from ledge to ledge. April (not April, Za-Naron) drifts down more swiftly, descending like a god from the heavens.

The survivors are trying to restrain her now, begging and pleading. Maybe the real April is still in there, maybe not, but Shini doubts she can hear them.

She's right. Za-Naron snaps her fingers and the others are sent flying, crashing against the walls with cries and groans of pain. Za-Naron holds them there, smiling softly as they gasp and wriggle like worms in a hook.

Then Shini leaps into the street, announcing her presence with a grenade plucked from her belt and tossed at Za-Naron. She raises her hands to absorb the blast, but it sends her reeling anyway--she's still getting used to this body, still trying to wield her power properly. Shini will have to use that.

The boys collapses to the street, gasping. Michelangelo is groaning, clutching his arm, while Leo-- _shit,_ Leo is holding his knee and staring at nothing, breaths coming hard and fast. Za-Naron has, whether inadvertently or on purpose, triggered a panic attack.

"Get them out of here," she barks to Raphael, who's staggering to his feet as she strides by.

"Wait, the fuck are you doing here? We don't listen to--"

" _Get them out of here,"_ Shini roars, twisting her head around its axis and flashing her eyes black. He staggers backward, blank with shock, and she hopes it'll be enough to get him and that crazy boy with the bandanna to listen.

Then she stands on the rainy street, looking up at Za-Naron as the other girl hovers over her head.

WHO.... And in this world the question comes in an almost normal tone of voice, but in Shini's head it's a tidal wave of sound ....ARE YOU? The spirits of her ancestors are blasted away by the sound, leaving her alone--but she's _not_ alone, not when she was earth under her feet and a bag of tricks in her hat.

"I am Shinigami," she says, proud that her voice does not shake. "I am Shadow Walker, Earth Daughter, Demon Banisher, blood of Okiko and blessed of Amaterasu."

THOSE WORDS MEAN NOTHING TO ME, says the invader. She cocks her head, a thoughtful smile on her lips. THE GIRL DEFEATED YOU, DIDN'T SHE? AND SHE ONLY HAD ACCESS TO A FRACTION OF HER POWER THEN.

"Perhaps," Shini says, shrugging. "But I'll give you a secret. I was holding back, too. Didn't want to hurt the little bird too badly on her first night out." She grins. "Of course, that was because I couldn't see _you,_ great Za-Naron. You were too good at cowering. If I had, I could have crushed you like the desperate little parasite you are."

ENOUGH. A invisible hand seizes Shini, starts to crush her bones together, buts she shifts to shadow and twists out of its grip. "Close, but no cigar," she croons, using one of those charming American expressions she picked up from a soldier in the fifties. "You'd have to use your bare hands to really get a grip on me, and you don't like dirtying those pretty little fingers of yours, do you, Za-Naron?"

YOU THINK SAYING MY NAME GIVES YOU POWER OVER ME? Za-Naron booms, ripping free a chunk of concrete and sending it hurtling at Shini. She backflips into the air, landing lightly as the concrete shatters on the wall behind her.

"Not really, but I'm a witch. We have funny ideas about names." Shini dodges a thrown sign, than ducks behind a wall to avoid the spray of glass from a shattering window. "Here, I'll give you a few!"

She rolls clear as the wall collapses on her. "I name you Rejected By The Sky." The earth gives a warning rumble, and Shini darts away as pipes shatter behind her. "I name you Unwanted By The Earth."

Shini grabs knives from her belt and twirls from between her fingers as she runs, feeling the metal warp and change beneath her fingers. "I name you Mind-Raper, Soul-Eater." She ducks behind a barrier as the knives finishing their transformation to twin pistols in her hands.

"I name you False God!" She explodes from cover, guns blazing. Za-Naron holds up a casual hand and the bullets stop in mid-air, a la Matrix. Shini turns to shadow right before they all go soaring at her, hissing at they tear through her immaterial form. When she shifts back the guns have reloaded, and she releases a fresh spray of fire.

Za-Naron stops them, twisting the bullets into vicious steel knives as they over in the air around her. AND WHAT EXACTLY WAS THAT SUPPOSED TO ACCOMPLISH? she asks, a low chuckle underlying her words.

"Nothing," Shini says, grinning brightly as her fresh cuts throb, telling her what's coming. She can feel the earth rumble under her feet again, and this time she knows it's not Za-Naron this time. "Just needed to give the spell some time to work. And distract you, of course. Telepaths have a bad habit of thinking they're omnipotent,"

Before Za-Naron can reply or unleash a fresh fusillade of death, the earth explodes below. The demon lets out a cry of shock, stolen bullets clattering back to earth, as the dead of New York City rise from the earth in a thick, steady geyser of flesh and bone.

"HOOOOOLY SHIIIIIIIIT!" Raphael screams somewhere behind them at the sight.

There are immigrants, Native Americans, children, gangsters, pilgrims, prostitutes, slaves, soldiers, broken workers, hitmen, suicides, the dead daughters of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, those who were sick or disabled or deformed in life. These are the angry ones, the lost ones, the ones who would burn the world for a second chance.

Shini has called to them all, woven a connection between her mind and their rotting skulls. And as she watches them emerge from hole after hole, climbing ever higher on each other's bodies, she gives them a single command: _bring down Za-Naron._

The demon waves her hand, splinter hundreds of corpses to nothing at a stroke, but there are thousands more to take their place. They scratch at her legs with shattered nails and ragged teeth, crumbling as they touch her skin. Desperate, ragged howls claw up their throats, rising in a cacophony of the damned.

If Za-Naron doesn't kill them all, Shini suspects that the Youtube videos someone is no doubt filming will have a million hits within the hour.

It won't be enough, she knows, not against someone like Za-Naron. New York has many many corpses, but they are not endless, because there was a time when Manhattan was a molten rock where nothing lived or died. Za-Naron is older than that; she can wait. She is patient.

And because she is so patient, she thinks that Shini will also keep playing the long game. So she doesn't see Shini twirl her guns back into knives and shove them back into her belt before dashing forward, leaping from corpse to corpse as easily as navigating rocks in a stream. She doesn't realize that this, too, is just another distraction.

Za-Naron is busy disintegrating a particularly large bruiser when Shini leaps onto her back, slapping her hands to her temples. She doesn't waste time on banter before beginning the exorcism chant, the tumbling blurring from her lips at lightning speed. Za-Naron can't focus on her without letting the zombies start munching, and Shini just needs a few minutes...

She's only halfway through when Za-Naron lets out a pricing cry, triggering a shockwave that shatters every pane of glass for miles and reduces the tower of the dead to a quaking red mass, new arrivals frantically pushing their way through the much.

Shini screams as her bones shatter, leaving her in too much pain to shift, and she's sent flying. From far away she hears her _spine_ crack as she tumbles down the street, shattered glass ripping her skin.

Za-Naron looms over her, mental and physical voices both sparkling with glee. WELL, YOU WERE A FUN CHALLENGE, LITTLE GIRL. I'LL THINK I'LL GO FIND THAT DARLING LAMIA I FOUND IN YOUR HEAD AND SHRED HER TO--Her words are cut as Shini's arm twitches, jiggles, and shoves itself back into joint with a very fucking painful _crack._

"You-- _cunt!"_ Shini forces out, her jaw snapping back into place with another _crack._ She hisses and groans, snapping her bones into place, taking advantage of her increased mobility to sit up. "That--hurt."

She lurches up, twisting and shambling like one of the very zombies she's summoned, although her steps grow smoother with every one. She sees Za-Naron's eyes go wide, shocked by the secret she missed when she was busy looking for petty things about Karai.

"I see," Shini grunts, her head twitching back and forth as she tries to jam it back into place, "you're," she grunts, shouldering shifting up and down, " _confused."_ Za-Naron rallies enough to toss some more glass and Shini just lets her twitching spine tug her into a perfect bend, allowing them to pass harmlessly overhead.

"I told you I was the blood of Okiku," she hisses, twisting into a crouch. "Better known as the Girl in the Well. They've made some movies about her--got a ton of shit wrong, of course, but the premise is the same."

She slaps her palms against the ground and more of the dead claw their way free, hissing and spitting. Shini rises with them, rolling her shoulders as her bones clink together. "Surviving the impossible."

WHAT ARE YOU? Za-Naron asks.

"There is no name for me in the books of Earth Men," Shini says truthfully. "They have only ever gotten glimpses of the truth."

The zombies around her crumble into nothing, but Shini lets herself shadow-shift as another wave of destruction passes over her. "Amaterasu is the Sun Goddess, by the way," she adds conversationally. "Meaning blue skies, fluffy clouds...and a fire to rival yours." She blows a kiss and a wave of flame escapes from her mouth, sending Za-naron frantically moving to block it as zombies dangle from her boots.

The god recovers herself quickly, but for a few previous seconds she's off-balance. Not enough for an exorcism, but _maybe_ just enough for Shini to reach through the mental link she inadvertently established by poking around in heads where she wasn't invited.

Shini may not be a telepath, not exactly, but she sees with more than eyes and she's an _expert_ at going where she's not invited.

This isn't an exorcism, it's an invasion.

She launches herself into the air, and a tidal wave of New York's dead follow her. Shini hits Za-Naron in a wave of shadow and rotting flesh, and they crash across the sky, screaming and spitting as they tear into each other's minds.

_Shini is kneeling at her grandmother's side in a little hut, watching rabbits flicker between living and dead in the heart of the pot--_

_Za-Naron's spinning across the stars, laughing and flying and screaming--_

_She is Shini listening to radio reports about Hiroshima while her family fights about whether humanity deserves to survive--_

_She is Za-Naron watching the race she created take its first steps, stumbling and broken, and oh she is so scared for them--_

_She is Shini hearing generations of passerby call her cruel names, call her witch freak dyke slut demon-fucker monster beast unlovable monstrous--_

_She is Za-Naron watching her descendants die, watching them hurt and kill each other, and the feeling is a knife in her heart--_

_She is--_

_She is--_

_She is lying on the table as the Kraang tear into her head she is watching her father mutate twice in a row she is snapping the legs of a classmate's desk by accident she is meeting the beautiful monstrous turtles she's feeling the need for the crystal grow every day and unable to stop it she the telepath empath mutant kuniochi daughter sister_ addict

And Shini has found the scattered bits of April O'Neil's soul, lost in her own head. She grabs them with desperate fingers and starts jamming them together. Za-Naron is screaming at her now, filling both their heads with a furious wild maelstrom, but Shini grits her teeth and bulls through.

 _April!_ she scream-thinks, as blood drips on her nose and the undead press down on her from above, doing their level best to pin Za-Naron to the dirt. _April, you crazy bitch, you have to stop this!_

The cry is faint and desperate: _can't...._

 _You don't have a fucking choice!_ Za-Naron, torn between defending her physical self and keeping Shini away from her mental self, can't do either properly. She screams under the weight of the endless river of corpses, raising her hands to create a shivering cocoon of telekinetic force around her body.

 _Come back,_ Shini orders, reaching for the scattered bits of yellow in Za-Naron's wild white soul and grabbing for them like the precious things they are. _Do it, or either I will have to kill you or you will us all._

More memories flicker through her fingers: _learning from Splinter_ _throwing Karai down the stairs hurling the Tessen into the tree leaping through the skies of New York laser gun blurring in her hand holding her father as he shakes in her arms dancing in the pit with the turtles the monsters her friends brothers_ family

Shini is unceremoniously ejected from April's head and sent tumbling across the street, bones snapping out and in of place as she groans in pain. Za-Naron's fury burns up the inside of her hate, a wave of HATE DESTRUCTION BITCH I WILL TEAR YOU APART SO SLOWLY

She groans under the onslaught, trying to stand and only making it to her knees. Blood drips from her nose and her fingers flex uselessly in the dirt. She's pushed too far, given too much of herself in this final desperate assault.

The zombies collapse into ash, partly from Za-Naron's latest onslaught and partly from the spell running out on itself. Shini winces at the sound of their last, feeble desperate cries; the poor things melt into nothing far too quickly, leaving only shattered stone and holes in the world to mark their passage.

Za-Naron rises, hair snapping in the wind like a triumphant red flag. IT'S OVER.

"Darling, I thought you were immortal?" Shini rasps, spitting a tooth with her words as soot blows into her mouth. "You should know by now that it's _never_ over." She raises twin middle fingers, hands only shaking a little. If she's going to die now, she'll die fighting.

And then Za-Naron's face twists, warps--and before Shini's wide eyes, _splits_ , two eyes melting into three and then four. She screams, clawing at herself as the walls and streets around her ripple and buckle.

Then she's _splitting in half_ as one of her hands grabs at the crystal, screaming in rage and fury when it shatters in her grip. Shini squeezes her eyes shut as a searing light engulfs the street, clapping her hands over her ears as the sonic boom of shattered atoms tears through the city.

When she cracks an eye open, April O'Neil is standing in the middle of the street, blood dripping from her nose and ears, tears glittering in her haunted, broken very _human_ blue eyes as she sobs quietly.

And standing across from her is.....a monster, wings spread, eyes huge and mad. DID YOU THINK IT WOULD REALLY BE THAT EASY?

 _Of course,_ Shini thinks, letting out a groan of pain and exhaustion and not a little exasperation. Of course she can't catch a break, of course Za-Naron could survive the destruction of one host and the rejection of the other, to stand tall and healthy while Shini has nothing left to give.

But at the sound of Za-Naron's voice, April lifts her head. "You _bitch,"_ she spits. And then she raises her hand as every piece of glass on the street leaps Into the air and hurtles toward Za-Naron, slamming into her body before she has a chance to defend herself.

Za-Naron screams under the onslaught, blood dripping from her wounds as her fingers twitch, preparing to retaliate. April's already charging, the Tessen and tanto leaping into her hands. She slams the sword into Za-Naron's chest while the fan arcs across her throat.

April screams, the war cry of a fallen star, and Za-Naron explodes in a storm of shadow and blood.

For a moment, there's silence, both inside and outside of Shini's head. She watches April stagger backward, bloodstained Carrie-style, her mouth working noiselessly.

"April?" Shini turns to see the remaining turtles and Casey Jones stagger down the street, eyes blank with shock. April cocks her head, staring at them. "Donnie...?" Her eyes go wide with horrified memory. "Donnie!"

She collapses to her knees with a groan, and the bloody ruins of Za-Naron leap at her touch. April grits her teeth and raises her hands, fingers twitching and dancing like a frantic puppeteers. The blood shifts, melting into yellow-white power, the last of Za-Naron's strength being converted to April's will.

Donatello Hamato staggers out of that haze. His eyes are clear, unlike Shini's zombies, and he _speaks,_ the words rasping hoarsely out of his throat: "April?" She staggers into his arms and clings on to him for dear life, sobbing brokenly.

Then Donatello's eyes shift to Shini, still kneeling on the street. "Shini?"

"Shini...." April stumbles away from Donnie and gazes at her, eyes widening with recognition. "Shini!"

And then they're all dashing to her side, with the kind of concern that might be improper for someone who recently beat the shit of them (but is _certainly_ proper for the hero who just saved their collective asses).

"Shini...." April whispers, kneeling down besides her. "God, I'm so sorry...."

Shini looks into April's weeping eyes and races a gentle hand on her cheek. _Kill her, before she can do this again,_ one of the grandmothers whispers faintly, but Shini pushes it away. She's not killing April, not after all the work she's just put into _saving_ her.

 _Good job,_ another grandmother reassures.

"You," Shini says aloud, as the world flickers black at the edges. "Owe me a _drink."_

Then she passes out, and if these turtles know what's good for them she'll wake up with wine and chocolates at her bedside.


	5. Eulogy

"This was a stupid idea," Raph mutters as he peers down the alley, clutching the bundle of roses in a death grip. "This isn't fucking Batman; we don't have to turn this place into Crime Alley or some shit. It's just a place."

"This was _your_ idea," Angel reminds him, sticking her hands into the pockets of her hoodie.

"Yeah, and you're all fucking idiots for going allowing with it," Raph says, stamping his feet anxiously. "We should just go put these back," he says, gesturing to the flowers.

"It might be ages before you find flowers that bright again," Alopex points out, the wind ruffling her fur as she wraps an arm around Angel's shoulders. "You said he liked bright stuff, right?"

"Yeah," Raph mutters, looking down at his feet. "He....his eyes, he could only see the really bright ones."

"You can take as long as you need, Raph," Casey says, squeezing his hand gently.

Raph sighs, shuffling back and forth. He waits for them to get bored and suggest something else, to no avail. Then he finds himself waiting for inspiration, until the first few words start trickling through his mind.

"Here lies Blind Buck," he says, gesturing at the alley. "Wait, that's bullshit--fuck, I don't _know_ where he's buried, could've been cremated or just rotting in a morgue somewhere, I don't know what the fuck they do. But this....this is where he died. Where I...." he sucks in a breath. "I left him, cause I panicked--I was such a fucking _retard_ back then..."

"Language," Angel says automatically.

Raph shrugs and groans, "Yeah, okay." They don't like it when he insults himself, which sometimes just makes him _madder_ at himself, which is _stupid...._ but he's getting off track.

"Buck was my friend," he continues, straightening. "He found me when I'd just been mutated, when I was running around like a crazy person and everyone who saw me either tried to kill me or was calling someone _else_ to kill me. I probably woulda been shot by a cop or hit by a car--or worse--if it weren't for Buck.

"He bumped inta me on the street, took me....well, not exactly took me in, he was legally _blind_ and _homeless_ , but he let me tag alone. He got me clothes, food; I think he knew how young I was, probably thought I was reta--disabled or somethin,' knew how much I needed. I didn't realize until later that he was always gave me the biggest portions." He sighs, rubs his forehead.

"So. Um. Buck taught me how to hide from cops and crooks--taught me they were basically the same thing, too. He taught me where to find the best old clothes, how make a blanket out of newspapers and a trash bag, how to find dumpster food that didn't give ya the shits, how to build fires and hide from the rain and dry off when you were wet, how to sneak into bathrooms and clean up.

"He showed me all the good places to squat, and made sure I always kept an eye out for wrecking crews. He kept me warm, showed me me how to bandage my cuts with stolen shit. He comforted me whenever I woke up from a nightmare I couldn't remember, and when people called me a freak he just told me they were stupid.

"He gave me books ta read, too, even if I always had ta figure them out myself." Raph smiles at the memory of struggling his way through waterlogged pages while snuggled up at Buck's side, squinting in the streetlight. "Lot of comics; that's probably how I caught the vigilante bug.

"I'd push him around his cart--it was easy, I didn't really how strong I was until later, too. He'd quote stuff, make jokes. He'd tell me stories about the stuff he'd seen and read before he'd gone blind, his childhood, his exes, his parents, his..."

The breath catches in his throat. "His kid, who...died, his ex-wife. He told me a little about going blind, but not much--don't think he really wanted to talk about, how things had all fallen apart, everything he'd lost, and he'd never had much to begin with..."

Raph sighs, shakes his head. "He told me these things, because he needed someone to tell his stories, and I didn't have many to tell. He told me, like, almost _everything_ I know about New York and America and the world and just _living. A_ ll the human stuff that the others learned from books or computers shit, I got from Buck. Things I couldn't even put the words too until it was too...too late to talk about them.

"He..." Raph sighs. "He didn't expect anything from me. Didn't need me to be a ninja, or a warrior or a son, or a _brother_. Just needed me to be.... _me._ And that was what I needed then, I think.

"We hung out with his friends, sometimes--the vagrants, the crazies, the hookers, the druggies, the lost kids. I always hid behind him, couldn't ever talk to them. They'd say mean things, say I was a freak or a dummy, and he'd tell 'em off for not gettin' to know me better 'fore sayin' such dumb things. I don't know...I don't how many friends he lost 'cause of me. I don't know how many times he stayed out a of a soup kitchen or somethin' cause I wouldn't go.

There are tears pricking his eyes, stirred up by the memory of kind, milky eyes and the softest voice Raph's ever heard, even softer than Splinter's at his nicest. "I never let 'I'm touch me for too long; I was so _scared_ he'd find out what I was, that he freak like everyone, call me a monster and try to kill me or have me taken away.

But," and here Raph can't keep a harsh laugh from escaping. "He _had_ to know, didn't he? I mean, we were curled up together half the time, from the= cold and stuff. He probably touched my shell a ton while I was asleep, by accident. And he was always so cool about me not wanting to go into buildings or talk to people. And at the end when he...he _held_ me," he clears his throat, "it was pretty clear then. He knew, he knew what it was, and he didn't think I was a monster, even when _I_ thought I was a monster."

He, um," Raph narrows his eyes, digging at the memory. "He said something, once, don't know if it was a quote or what." He clears his throat, lets himself slip a bit into Buck's accent: "'Twas _ever_ thus! Be it the sun or the moon...rain nor shine...we shall forsake all who forsake use and rise _ever forward."_ His voice rings through the silent alley.

Raph sighs and glances at the droopy flowers, gleaming like blood in his hand. "But he didn't rise, did he? He died," and the word comes out as stiff and final as an ejected gun clip. "He got his face smashed in by a coupla coked-up punks who got off on smacking 'round people who didn't have a hope in hell of fighting back.

"And all that _ninja_ training..." He clenched his fist painfully tight, relishing the cut of his nails in his skin. "Didn't do shit to save him, not 'till they were going after _me."_ He shakes his head, flowers shaking a little in his grip. "My subconsciousness is a pretty damn selfish motherfucker, apparently."

They don't try to comfort him; not then, anyway. They don't want to break the flow of the story, because they know how much he needs this.

"He was screamin', cryin'," Raph tells the street. "I...I barely recognized his voice when it wasn't telling songs or stories, givin' advice, comfortin' me. I..." He sucks in a breath, remembering the hot spurt of blood and the sickening _crunch_ of bone, the terrible words from those terrible men. _Retards. Cripples. Sickos. Gimps. Freaks. Monsters._

"I killed them."

He's never admitted this before, not even to himself. He can't look at the others.

"I lost control. I..." He'd destroyed them quickly, efficiently, with shattered necks and spines. "I felt _good_ afterward, for a few seconds. And then...then I remembered that I'd just _killed_ people, and Buck had _heard_ me, and he was _dyin',_ and even if I knew how to navigate for _shit_ there was no way I was gettin' him to a hospital or callin' an ambulance in time..."

Raph stares at his feet. "He forgive me," he says. "He told me it wasn't my fault, that he wasn't scared, that he'd never be scared again. Told me not to worry, that he was just going to see-- _see--_ what was next. Said he'd thought it was over when he went blind, but that if he'd given up he never woulda met me."

The tears are flowing faster now, spilling down his cheeks. "He told me not to lose hope, to remember what he taught me, that he had faith in me, that I was a _good_ person." He scrubs at his eyes, feeling hot water splash onto his hand. "He promised me everything was gonna be okay, that I was gonna find someone to see what was good in me--to _love_ me--the way he had. And then....

"Then he was dead. And I'll never even know his name."

The roses slip from his hands, a sad, silly, beautiful ending to this sad, silly, beautiful speech. Raph watches them tumble across the alley in a spray of blood--not, not blood. _Fire._ A fire bright enough to light up the world, the kind Buck loved.

"And I was alive," he said quietly. "And survival...it was hard." He winces, pushing the dark memories away. He's already shared the worst ones with Casey, and some of the others with Alopex or Angel. "I thought about dying, a few times. And I...I hated myself for what I did. Sometimes I still do." It's why it took so long to forgive his father for what happened to Dun, hypocritical as it was. "But Buck told me to keep going, so I kept going."

He glances at the observers, all with tears glistening in their eyes. Two of his best friends and the boy he loves, standing here, watching him ramble without the smallest trace of judgement. "And I found my brothers, my father," he tells them. "And I found you. I..." He lets out a soft sob. "He woulda loved you guys."

Raph looks up at the sky, where Buck would have risen if he's risen anywhere. "I used to think ghosts were bullshit. But now, after all this stuff with my mom....I don't know. So, Buck, if you're listenin', if you're _lookin'_ I just wanna say that you were the best, and thank you. For everything. And I...I love you, too. Always."

As the last word slips from his mouth, Raph lets his head fall forward. He hugs himself, thinking of grief and joy, pain and hope, terror and discovery, the nightmare of being hated and the joys of being loved.

Then he starts to cry in earnest, big heaving sobs that shake his shell. Casey pulls him into a hug, planting a feather-light kiss on his cheeks. "It's okay," he whispers, his voice soft and gentle. More warmth presses in around Raph as Angel and Alopex pile on, holding him with muscled arms covered in cloth and fur.

They stand there, giving him a safe place to fall apart, for as long as he needs.

It's what Buck would have wanted.


	6. Found

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Takes place during TMNT Micro-Series: Leonardo.

Ellie Markston is having a _terrible_ day.

The voices are in the middle of a wretched argument about philosophy, it's _raining,_ and the lovely house she's been living for the past few weeks has just been _invaded_ by a bunch of _ninjas._ Not to mention the _turtle._

She'd been in the middle of trying to talk the voices off some inane track when the little green creature had leaped into her house--through the _window_ , mind you, hadn't anyone ever taught him to use doors?--with a horde of sword-wielding men in black on his heels. Ellie had seen martial arts movies in the years before her mind fully turned against her; she knew ninja when she saw them.

 _Leave the lady alone,_ the turtle said, which she supposed redeemed his invasion in some small way. He was certainly better than the ninja, who didn't even bother to introduce themselves as they careened about in a seemingly endless black tide.

And _then_ there was a terrible fight in her hall, with swords and smashing and the little turtle yelling questions at the ninja, to no avail. Ellie had poked and shoved at them, ordering them to leave, but they'd simply smacked her away like she was an _insect._ Really, terribly rude.

The little turtle had been pinned down, and some of the other ninjas had started dragging Ellie away while she screamed and clawed at them. She'd been so _scared_ , even more scared than she'd been that time a man cornered her in an alley. She tried to kick them in the groin the way she'd done to that man, and they just started grabbing at her feet and hoisting her like a parcel.

But the turtle had broken free, screaming in fury and pain in a way that reminded Ellie of one of her fellow parents at the hospital having a bad dream. He'd sliced and kicked until the ninja were all groaning on the floor or fleeing for the roof. He'd dashed after them, still screaming, leaving Ellie panting and shaking among their limp bodies.

"Oh..." she moans, rubbing her eyes. "I'll have to _leave!"_ She certainly can't stay here with all the unconscious ninja; they're an eyesore now and will be worse when they wake up.

So she makes her way downstairs, pausing to grab the car she left on the downstairs floor. The voices chatter and snarl at each other, and Ellie mutters back to them as she makes her way out of the house.

She's just stepping out onto the street and scanning the clouds for satellites when the turtle falls out of the sky, landing in the nearby dumpster with a very final _thump_. Ellie yelps, staggering backward. She glances up to see one of the ninja peering over the edge of the roof and instinctively hops back into the shadows, pressing her back against the stone wall. An alarm bell cuts through the voices, singing _danger danger danger_ at the sight of that man.

But the ninja turns away and hops off across the roofs, leaving Ellie alone with the turtle.

She almost considers walking away--some of the voices suggest it--but others say no and besides, rude as he is, he _did_ save her. Ellie's mother bless her soul, always said that one good turn deserves another.

So she makes her way over to the turtle, staying close against the wall so no satellites or ninja can see her. "Are you all right?" she asks, bending over him. A hunk of messy brown hair tumbles over her face and she pulls it back so she can get a look at him.

"Mother?" he asks, blinking behind that funny blue mask he's wearing. He sounds quite young, now that Ellie thinks about it.

"No, I'm Ellie," she says, reaching down to tug on his shell. It's slippery, and she has to dig in her fingers quite a bit before she can hoist him into a sitting position. He grunts with pain as she moves, ribs creaking, and she lets out a sympathetic hiss. "Thank you," he forces out, placing a hand on his side.

"Your mother really shouldn't let you run out in the rain like this," she chides. "Can you climb out?"

The turtle blinks, rubbing his eyes, before bracing himself on the edge of the dumpster. He grits his teeth and leans forward, toppling into Ellie's arm with yelps from them both. He's heavier than Ellie though, but years of endless walking or running, of scrambling into condemned buildings and unlocked basements, has left her stronger than she looks. She tumbles him into her cart, nestling him among all the old things she's collected over the years.

"Umm..." The turtle says, peering over the edge of the cart.

"It's where I keep things I've found," she explains. "You're something I've found." One of the voices remind her that the turtle might already have a home of his own, and she asks, "Where do you live?"

"The sewers," the turtle replies, keeping the exact location vague. That's good; she doesn't want the satellites to overhear him and follow him home. "There's a loosened grate a few blocks down, but I can make it myself, I heal qui--oh!"

He falls back a little as Ellie starts pushing the cart down the alley, relishing its comforting rattle through her finger bones. She grabs a battered slicker from its depths and tosses it over her head, keeping out the rain.

"One good turn deserves another," she reminds him, grabbing an bundle of old sweaters and tossing it over him. "Now, hold still. I don't want the satellites to see you." The turtle blinks at her groggily, in the manner of people who've just taken their pills at the hospital or gotten whacked over the head with a bottle at the street, and seems to decides resisting isn't worth the effort as she tugs one of the cleaner sweaters over his face.

As she shoves the cart down the street, ignored by New York's passerby, she asks him, "Do you make a habit out of breaking into people's house's and messing up their things?"

"Sorry," the turtle replies, his voice muffled by the cloth. "They were chasing me. I didn't know anyone was there." He squirms a little in the confines of the cart, trying to make himself comfortable. "They should be gone by the time you get back." A bit of concern slips into his voice. "Do you have enough to eat in there? It looked kind of....uh, bare."

"There's a pretty good soup kitchen down the street," Ellie assures him. "Plus the Chinese place usually has some left--no, I will _not!"_ she orders one of the voices sternly; a particularly rude one suggesting they turn the turtle over for science or something particularly ghastly.

They continue in relative quiet for a few more minutes, the turtle occasionally offering directions from his place in the cart. Eventually, he says, "You're not afraid of me."

"No," Ellie replies, tightening her grip on the cart to keep it from toppling as it turns a corner. "I mean, you're _strange,_ no doubt, and rude, but you try to make up for it, and most people don't even do that. Besides, you're so _little,_ it's hard to be afraid of you."

"Thank you, I guess," says the turtle, peering out through the folds of the sweater. "Turn here, please."

"Are people often afraid of you?" Ellie asks, tugging the car under a ledge at a flicker from what might be an approaching satellite. It's just a pigeon, thank God. "That can't be very nice."

She flexes her fingers, dirty nails catching the light as she emerges back onto the street. "Sometimes people are afraid of me, too," she confesses. "It's because I'm....different. I think different." _Crazy_ flickers at the edge of her mind, sliding in under the hum of the voices, but she shoves it away.

The turtle glances up at her, eyes glittering slightly. "Sometimes I worry that I'm going to start...thinking different from other people. I see things...one thing, really, a person." His hands flex under the fabric.

"Oh, I knew someone in the hospital like that!" Ellie says excitedly. "She knew some people who died, but they loved her a _lot,_ so they kept coming back to visit her!"

The turtle tenses at the words, for some reason. "Did she get better?" he asks cautiously.

"Don't know." Ellie shrugs. "I left before she did." She cocks her head, eyes narrowing as she goes through her memories of the turtle's fight. "You...did you see someone? I think...." The voices had been so loud, but everything else had been so quiet, and she might have heard him say... "Mother. Your mother, right? You saw her during the fight."

The turtle doesn't say anything.

"That must mean she loves you," Ellie says. The voices break into argument about that, but Ellie doesn't mind because she _knows_ she's right, and a lot of the other voices know that, too. "She's got to love you a _lot,_ and that says something good about you, even if you are rather rude."

The turtle seems to contemplate this for a few seconds, then says, "We're here." Ellie jerks to a stop with surprise, realizing that she is, in fact, approaching a loose-looking sewer grate. As the car creaks to a stop, the turtle tenses before elegantly leap out of the nest of sweaters, landing on the street with a grunt.

"You all right?" Ellie asks as the turtle straightens, swaying slightly.

"Yes, thank you." He makes an elegant bow. "Thank you for your assistance, ma'am, and I apologize once more by the trouble." Ellie can't keep from smiling at the sight of this strange little creature _bowing_ to her.

"My name's Ellie," she says, extending her hand. "Ellie Markston."

"Leonardo Hamato," he replies, shaking it. His fingers are callused, but someone soft, and cooler than a human hand. "I wish you the best, Miss Markston."

And with that he's tugging the sewer cover aside and leaping down, pulling it back into place as he falls. Ellie cocks her head, straining her ears, and thinks she can make out the faintest _thump_ as he lands in the sewers below.

She sighs and turns away, pushing her cart back towards what she really hopes will be an empty domicile. She discusses the strange little turtle with her voices as she walks; the general impression is that as terrible as this day has been, it could have gone a lot worse.


	7. Gone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sort of an even darker version of ABC TMNT's "Flood" and ABC TMNT II's "Desperate."

In a perfect world, Hamato Yoshi could stay underground with his sons all the time, living off of algae and stray dogs and the detritus of the city above. In an imperfect world, though, he has to face certain realities: that people rarely toss safe medicine down the garbage disposal, that children need things like milk and fruit which are rarely found in sewers, that during winter the dogs are harder to find and the algae starts to die.

So he goes up, leaving Leo in charge. Sometimes he'll comes back to chaos, but he's never gone for too long--a few hours at the most--so things rarely have a chance to really escalate.

Then there comes a day in January when they're seven years old and their father doesn't come back at all. He leaves sometime after lunch, and it's not until his children's stomachs start rumbling for dinner that they realize how long it's been since he left. Leo makes dinner, standing on a chair to reach the stove, and reads his brothers bedtime stories until his voice is hoarse and they've fallen asleep.

The next day, their father's still not there.

And that's when they start to worry a little bit.

"Maybe he got stuck in traffic?" Mikey asks as they sit around the kitchen table, picking at their cereal. "That's what happens when dads are late coming back, right?"

"He doesn't have a _car,_ dipshit," Raph points.

"No cursing," Leo reminds him sharply. Raph sticks out his tongue, Leo pokes him with a spoon, Raph punches him in the face, and then they're tackling each other to the floor as the others finish eating in silence.

No one really knows what to do afterwards. Leo goes to the dojo and starts running through his katas, hoping to impress Sensei when he gets back. Raph goes to his room and plays with his one-legged Wolverine figure, while Donnie loads a scratchy DVD of _Jem and the Holograms_ into the TV for Mikey before going to dissemble and reassemble the microwave.

They spend lunch waiting for Sensei to get back, discussing the amazing gifts he must be getting them to be gone so long. Raph wants a Hulk action figure, Leo wants new ink for kanji, Donnie wants another textbook, and Mikey wants one of those cool wigs like Jem and her friends wear. This last request starts a lengthy discussion on the manliness of colorful wigs, and they almost forget their Sensei's non-appearance.

"You gave us more yesterday!" Mikey complains, poking at his food.

"And there's not as much today," Leo explains carefully, not meeting his eyes. "So we need to be more careful so we...so we don't eat it up before Sensei gets back and look like we can't manage ourselves properly."

"That's stupid," Mikey mutters, but he doesn't press the issue. There's a part of him that understands what Leo's really saying, what might happen if they eat all the food before Sensei gets back.

The second day, Leo tries to get them to train. "Sensei wouldn't want us to get rusty," he explains. Raph starts a fight at the very idea of Leo telling him what to do, and there's no Sensei to keep them from leaving a dent in the walls and knocking one of the doors loose. The three older brothers frantically try to duct-tape the damage while Mikey goes to curl up with his teddy and quietly pray for Sensei to come home safely.

They're eating dinner when Donnie raises the question that's hovering over everyone's heads: "What if he got hurt?"

"He didn't get _hurt,"_ Raph reminds him firmly. "Sensei doesn't _get_ hurt _."_

"But if he _is,"_ Donnie presses, "We'll have to find hi--"

"Sensei says we're not allowed to go into the tunnels alone," Leo reminds him.

"But if he _needs_ us..." Donnie presses.

"He _doesn't,"_ Leo repeats. "He doesn't need help, he probably just had to, like, protect the innocent from some bad guys or something while he was heading back. Now, eat your peas."

Leo glances down at his hands, at his small fingers clutching the fork. "He's okay," he repeats, his voice just a little less sure than before.

The next morning, when Sensei _still_ hasn't shown up, Donnie and Raph announce that they're going looking for him, and Mikey and Leo don't need much convincing. They set off down the tunnels, holding onto their flashlights and each other. All the shadows and endless _drip drip drip_ of water in the distance are kinda scary, but they're big boys, so they don't pay attention to these things. They _don't._

Mikey brings a bag of snacks and Donnie carries a pack of medical supplies that "we probably won't need." They get tired pretty quickly and end up foisting their burdens onto Leo and Raph, respectively. Leo straps Mikey's bag to his chest like a kangaroo's punch, since he insisted on bringing along his small swords.

"What did you _put_ in here, anyway?" Raph asks, grunting under the weight of the overstuffed pack.

"Bandages, some of the pain pills," Donnie replies. "Oh, and the anatomy textbook Sensei found a weeks ago. I haven't quite memorized it yet, so I might need to consult it in case--"

He ducks just in time to avoid Raph waking him over the head with the bag. Raph stumbles into Leo, who bangs into Mikey and they all crash to the ground in an avalanche of tears and accusations.

When they finally get up, they resume wandering through the tunnels, calling for their father at the top of their young voices. "Sensei! Sensei, it's us! Seeeensei!"

Their father doesn't respond. But something else does.

The dog staggers out of a heap of trash, skeletal limbs quivering, patches of mangy skin visible among matted fur. It peers at them with curious brown eyes, flickering in the glow of their flashlights.

"Wow..." Mikey says, eyes wide with awe. Raph extends a hand almost on instinct and the dog lifts his head, its lips twitching into what might be a smile.

A white froth spills from its jaws.

"NO!" Leo screams, yanking his brothers away. His father has warned him about this, has made it clear that as silly a dog with a frothy mouth looks, it is one of the most dangerous things in the world.

"What?" Mikey asks, blinking in confusion. "It's just a--" But Donnie's already yanking him close, screeching at the top of his lungs, because while Leo just understands that this dog is dangerous, Donnie knows _exactly_ what a bite from it will do to them, and it's all he can do to keep from wetting himself.

Leo shoves the others behind him as the dog approaches, drawing his swords. "Sta-stay back!" The dog cocks his head, as if actually considering this, before lunging.

They all scream as Leo's sword slices through the dog's muzzle, filling the world with red and white. Flashlights shatter as they turn and run for their lives while the dog runs in circles behind them, howling, blinded by pain.

They get lost twice on the back of the Lair, yelling at each other about which way is the right way. Raph thinks it's _this_ way and Leo knows it's _that_ way and Donnie's practically the maps so they should just listen to him and Mikey won't stop _crying._

When they got home, they're all exhausted and hoarse. Leo barricades himself in the shower and uses all the hot water, but none of the others begrudge him. Raph hides in his room and he definitely doesn't cry, big boys never cry and older brothers certainly don't. Mikey curls up on Donnie's lap and keeps crying, while Donnie strokes his head and frantically flip through the textbooks with his free hand, praying that foam doesn't give people rabies because _Leo can't get sick._

They all sleep piled in Leo's bed, and don't discuss looking for their father again.

"He left," Raph says at lunch next day.

"Don't be _stupid,"_ Leo says, rolling his eyes. "Why on earth would he leave?"

"Miwa."

And everyone goes very still.

Hamato Miwa is two things to them. On one level she is the mystical Big Sister, another source of protection and love, but one who might understand them in a way Sensei never can. On another she is the Replacement, a girl who is everything they will never be: sweet and soft and literally unable to do wrong and, above all, _human._

She is the beautiful standard whose spirit they are literally expected to pray for. They've all had nightmares about Splinter coming home with Miwa and telling them he doesn't need them anymore, although Mikey is the only one who will ever admit it.

"Miwa's dead," Leo says firmly. _She can't hurt us_ , is what he means.

"What if it's like, you know, one of those soap operas where you think someone's dead and they turn out to be amnesiac or something?" Raph asks.

"That's fictional," Donnie points out.

"I _know_ that, genius," Raph growls. "But what if it happened in real life? What if he found her, and Tang Shen again, and they gave him a chance to be human or something? What if he didn't want to be our father anymore?"

"That's just _stupid,"_ Leo points out. "All of it. It couldn't happen, and even if it _did,_ Sensei wouldn't leave us."

"But he did leave us," Mikey says quietly, not looking up from his small helping of algae (largely than anything his brothers gave themselves).

"He went to get _supplies,"_ Leo says, with a confidence that is almost completely unfazed. "You two are acting like babies."

"What happens if he doesn't come back?" Donnie asks, stirring his food quietly. "We already harvested most of the algae, and there's not a lot of other stuff--"

" _He's coming back!"_ Leo says, slamming his hands on the table as his eyes burn blue fire. "He--he's coming..." He trails off at the sight of his siblings' faces. "He's coming back." he repeats, quieter. He glances down at his lap. "I'm sorry."

They finish eating in silence. Afterwards, Leo goes to the dojo to train, and finds himself feeling a little shorter of breath than usual.

He's stirred by the sound of an explosion and finds the others running around like chickens with their heads cut off while the ruins of the microwave blazes merrily. Leo grabs a cup of water and dumps it on the inferno, jumping back with a cry as painfully hot steam hisses everywhere.

First, Leo tries to lecture his brother, the way Sensei would have. But he realizes too late that the lecture has turned to yelling, and now Donnie is crying, and now _Leo's_ crying, even though he _can't_ cry because he's the eldest, and the thought of this failure just makes him cry harder.

And then Raph and Mikey are crying, too, because their brothers are crying. They curl up on the floor together, crying and crying, until the ground is sticky with their tears.

When Leo makes dinner that night, he uses up the last of the food.

The next morning, Leo wakes Raph up early and they force each other out into the sewer, accusing each other of being cowards in an attempt to ignore their own fears. They find enough algae for breakfast and maybe lunch, but that's about it.

For breakfast, Leo does his best to make smiley faces out of the algae pancakes. Raph tells him it's lame, so Leo makes his his into a frowny face instead. He doesn't make any for himself, claiming that he ate while Raph was in the bathroom.

Leo spends most of the day pacing in front of the Lair's entrance, waiting for his father to come back. He only leaves for the _Space Heroes_ episode, and even then he can't really enjoy it because he keeps his ear slits pricked, waiting for his father to return.

Donnie huddles in front of the microwave, the little pieces slipping out of his hands or digging into his skin because he's moving too quickly and his fingers are shaking too hard. He needs the microwave to be perfect when Sensei gets home; he doesn't believe the crazy stuff Raph said about Miwa but. But.

Raph needs to punch something, and maybe his brothers can sense that because none of them go anywhere near him. So has to go into the room and punch the wall, instead. Donnie finds him huddled in the bathroom, hissing as he dabs at bloody knuckles, and doesn't say a word as he goes to get some bandages.

Mikey kneels on his bed, the way he's seen kids do on TV, and prays for God and Jesus to bring his daddy back.

Leo goes hunting the next day, slinging his child's bow over his back and leaving a note for his brothers. He forces himself on despite the fear, despite the darkness, because he's the oldest and he needs to take care of his brothers.

But he is also small, and weak from hunger, and unable to keep himself from jumping at anything that moves. He only sees one dog, and he's so frantic to get an arrow notched that he accidentally makes enough noise to scare it off.

"Stupid," he hisses, smacking himself in the side of the head. "Idiot numbskull dimwit _dipshit."_

He finds some thrown-away food, but most of it is either waterlogged to the point it falls apart in his hands or covered in too many bites, so he remembers his father's lessons and stays away. He finds a bit more algae, but not nearly enough to feed four turtles.

Leo looks thoughtfully up at the sewer grate, but the very thought of climbing up there makes his knees weak. What if it's day up there? What if he emerges in a busy street? What if he can't make it to the shadows in time? He walks away, quietly berating himself for his cowardice.

The rats are too quick for him to catch, especially in his exhausted, hungry state. Leo tells himself that he wouldn't want to catch them anyway, no matter what.

There's some algae, but it's not enough, never enough, not with the cold air sinking down into the sewer and how much they've eaten already. Leo shoves every scrap he can find into his bag and tries to convince himself it's heavier than it is.

He stays out until his fear of returning home with nothing is balanced by his fear of leaving his brothers along for too long--or, worse, missing his father's return.

When he comes home the oven is a smoking ruin, Donnie is sitting under the table with a bloody nose, and Raph (with a bruise on his head suggesting a blow from a bo staff) punches Leo in the face the minute he steps into the door.

A sobbing Mikey tackles Leo's legs out from under him. "W-we thought y-you weren't ever coming back," he wails, snot and tears bubbling over Leo's skin. And then Raph and Donnie are both piling on, yelling at the top of their lungs. They don't cry, because they already cried themselves out while Leo was gone.

Leo pulls them close and tells them that he loves them, that he'd never ever ever ever leave them and that Splinter hasn't either. They try so hard to believe it.

His brothers breathe in his scent, and Raph forgets about accusing Donnie of destroying the oven on purpose, and Donnie stops wondering if he might have actually destroyed the oven on person, and Mikey doesn't feel like he's drowning anymore. Things aren't completely better, but they're okay.

That night, they all crawl into bed with Leo again. The algae wasn't enough, of course, and eating it actually makes them them hungrier.

When Mikey makes a slow, sleepy nibble on Leo's shoulder, just to feel _something_ in his mouth again, his brother doesn't push him away.

He can feed his brothers, he thinks. He _will_ , no matter what it takes.

They start losing track of time. Start moving less, unless they absolutely have to. Donnie finds himself making plans for a rat trap, but everything he knows about traps involves finding a way to lure the rat, and they have nothing to lure the rats with.

None of them can leave the lair. Maybe it's stupid, maybe it's childish, but the idea of leaving, in a group or alone, brings back all the terrible emotions shared by all when Leo left. Not to mention how thinking about _that_ is a reminder of how Splinter is _still_ gone, and what if he _left,_ and what if he's _dead,_ and what if he _left_ them, and they really don't have tears to spare at this point.

They spent most of their time curled up on the couch together, watching TV together. Leo no longer mentions training, and Donnies lectures his brother whenever they start to fidget, pointing out the need to preserve every precious calorie.

They can't stop whining over how hungry they are, and hating themselves for whining, and then whining some more. The whining escalates into fights, and they all want the fighting to stop right up until they realize that if the fight stops it might mean something irreversible has happened.

Chewing on their masks helps, at least a little. Raph actually swallows a few bites of his, and Leo's about to lecture him on it before Donnie gives him a pleading look. It's the kind of look that never would have worked when things were normal, but now Leo just nods and leans back.

Leo hands at cups of something red two mornings after the botched hunting expedition, claiming he found a jar of Kool-Aid. The others drink it; they don't have the strength to point out preposterous this is, or to acknowledge the fresh bandage on Leo's arm. They can't think about the little bits of flesh mixed in with the red

And when Raph hands out more cups next morning, with a slightly bigger bandage on _his_ wrist, the others pretend not to notice when Leo grabs him by the wrist and drags into the bathroom. They scream at each other for a long time, about the need to survive and the responsibilities bigger brothers have to little brothers and the need little brothers have to keep older ones alive.

"Don't," Leo begs, finally, hands shaking as they dig into Raph's shoulders. "Please, don't do this, _please,_ let me take care of you, that what's I'm sup--" he sucks in a breath, "That's what I _want_ to do."

Raph stares at the ground, small brow furrowed. He knows all of this is wrong wrong _wrong,_ but his brother has never begged for anything before, not like this, not from him. And he is so _hungry_ , even with the blood to take the edge off. They need every bit they can get.

"Don't cut any deeper," he says quietly. "And I...I think you need to talk to Donnie, or get one of his books, find out where it's safest." He looks at his brother, green staring into blue. "And I won't cut again, I promise."

"Okay," Leo says, pulling him close.

"I love you," Raph murmurs into his brother's earslit.

"I love you, too."

Mikey catches a pair of rats in the bathroom one night and ends up waking Donnie for help. Cooking it is difficult, especially since neither of them really has the strength to talk about what they're doing.

They manage to make the carefully named "soup" last for two whole days. The next morning, Leo has a new cut under his ankle, the bandage bumpy beneath his wrappings.

Approximately two weeks after their father disappeared, when Mikey asks Leo, "Are we going to die?"

"No," Leo says, grabbing his hands and staring hard into his eyes. "We'll be okay."

"Yeah, dummy," Raph mutters, pulling them both into a hug.

"Hush," Donnie mutters, snuggling up under's Mikey's armpit. "It's starting." They watch the _Firefly_ theme song play in silence; perhaps the show's not completely suitable for small boys, but it was one of the only ones they had left.

Besides, it's already crossed all their minds, before Mikey said it out loud, that they might never get the chance to be anything more than small boys.

A cop wings the rat after stumbling upon him in the middle of a completely unrelated investigation, and ends up putting it in handcuffs because you couldn't let a thing like that just _run around_ , someone might get _hurt._

The men in black come for him at the hospital.

They keep it gagged, for the most part. They don't like the way it patiently explains to them, over and over again, that its name is Hamato Yoshi, that it used to be human before it was mutated, that it has _rights_ and you cannot _do_ this.

He doesn't mention his children. The possibility of gaining their sympathy does not outweigh the risk of them being hunted down.

Yoshi stays shackled in a windowless room for an indeterminate amount of time as his wound heals, dooming his first few escape attempts. The men in black take samples of his blood, skin, flesh, tissue, fur, and bone. They scan and measure everything. They inject him with different things, things that make him scream in agony or giggle like a lunatic or see his dead wives' face. They study how his body reacts to electric stimulation, how long he can go without air, food, water, sleep.

For all their tests, they do not realize what he is capable of until the day he grabs a scalpel from a table as they're strapping him down. That day, Yoshi learns a little about how Saki thinks, about what it's like to see red and cut people down like wheat in a field.

The bodies fall at his feet, and for a few wicked heartbeats he feels transformed into a god of steel and death. He shoves the memory as far away as he can, later, but in the moment it is one of the glorious and terrifying things he has ever experienced.

Yoshi takes the time to torture the location of his robe, stick, and pack of supplies out of one of the scientists. He also raids the refrigerator in the break room, considering that it's only fair. On a whim, he sees a little turtle inside a cage, waiting patiently for experimentation, and sticks it in his pocket.

He flies home on winged feet, letting the sewers swallow him up. It's only when he's among the filth and the muck that he can _breathe_ again, really, and if he wasn't so weak with relief he might be worried about that.

Still, when he finds a rabid dog on the way home he takes the time to put it out of it's misery. He doesn't think about the odd marks on its mutilated muzzle until much later.

Yoshi opens the door and finds his sons asleep on the couch before a silent television. He creeps towards them, intending to gently shake them awake and chide them for staying up so long.

He's _sure_ he makes no noise, but Michelangelo hears him anyway, sitting up and staring up at him with a groan. He lets out a startled cry and topples off the couch, awakening all of his brothers.

"It's...it's you..." Donatello says, tears filling his red-brown eyes. "Are--are you real?" He takes a step towards his father, but he trips on his own feet and Yoshi barely catches him before he face-plants on the floor.

And the moment his fingers touch his son's too-small, too-light body, Yoshi realizes he's been lying to himself. He sees how very thin his sons have become, understands the nature of the desperate hope in their eyes.

He'd convinced himself that he'd only been locked up for a few days at the most, but it's been longer. Much too longer.

Yoshi gathers him to his chest like a bundle of china dolls, weeping at how fragile they fell, at how frantically they cling to him with every ounce of strength in their tiny bodies. "Sensei," they whisper, tears staining his fur. "Splinter. _Farther."_

And then they start using another word, one they haven't used in years. "Daddy," they say, over and over again. "Daddy. Daddy _. Daddy."_

After he's given them their first meal in a long time, forcing them to eat slowly because he's terrified of their stomachs bursting, after he's given them a bath and done what he can for Leonardo's mysterious cuts, he finds the courage to ask: "How long?"

"Two weeks, we think," Donatello murmurs, pillowing his head on Yoshi's arm. "We watched alla the DVDs."

"Where'd you get the turtle?" Raphael asks, watching it crawl across the table with fascination.

"I took him from a place he wasn't safe, and brought him somewhere where he might fit," Yoshi says, planting a kiss on his son's head and inhaling his deep, rich scent.

Splinter waits as long as he can before leaving again, but his sons still beg him not to go. They spend the entire two hours waiting in rigid terror, counting the seconds. The fear haunts them less often as the years pass, but it still comes back, sometimes.

Mikey sometimes leaves little caches of food around the place. The others don't disturb them without his expression permission. They break so many rules about each other, but this isn't one.

When they finally meet Karai, and discover who she is to them, Donnie is the only one who remembers Raph's prescient comment. He doesn't bring it up, because he knows that the only reasons his brothers don't remember is because they've tried so hard to remove those two terrible weeks from their minds. Donnie's tried too, of course, but his perfect memory makes it so much harder.

April asks about Leo's scars, once, and Leo the Terrible Liar talks gives an offhand reply about training accidents (it helps that they all have plenty of scars from just that). She doesn't suspect anything different until years later, when Donnie gets drunk and spills the ugly story to her and Casey. When Donnie wakes up the next morning, he's deeply hungover and held tight in the loving arms of his friends.

No matter how long or hard the mission, they're always relieved to have Splinter waiting for them at the end, because it means things could be worse.

The first time he's _not_ there, it brings everything rushing back and they break down sobbing in each other's arms, piling into Leo's bed again even though they're in danger of breaking it at this point.

This happens several more times over the years, but whenever they calm down they can always go to the kitchen and find it well stocked with food, all the food they could ever need. They can look over the food today, and they can assure each other that it's okay, they'll survive, that no matter how much the past hurts the future still has the potential to be bright.

And then Mikey will probably start singing "Food, Glorious Food" (either the Oliver Twist or _Ice Age 2_ version, depending on his whim) until he's glared or punched into silence.


	8. Heartbeat

The Technodrome falls from the sky, blazing painfully bright, and they all scream at the same time. They don't 'yell' or 'shout' or do anything expected from boys crying out in pain, they scream. They scream like the victim in a horror movie and the soldier watching their friend die on the battlefield and a person watching the very fabric of the world crumbling in on itself, because that is what they are.

The first time they screamed out like this, in terror and rage and confusion and pain, they'd just been born. Mutation is an ugly green trauma, and being babies when it happens does not make it any easier.

But that time, it least, they had each other. Now there are only three turtles left in the life raft, and the fourth one is being swallowed up by the icy crushing water.

And Leo has always had the shortest air capacity of the four. They used to tease him about this in the early days, back when they were young and sure they could always rescue him should he ever need help.

They watch the Technodrome vanish into the hungry deeps, and Donnie crashes to his knees. Raph braces himself over the edge of the boat, panting, trying not to throw up. And Mikey...

Mikey doesn't hesitate before throwing himself over the edge of the boat in a perfect swan dive, disappearing with a _splash_ that is far too quiet for the situation. Then the other two are hurling themselves in after him, and April is left huddled in the center of the boat, shaking.

She closes her eyes and prays for the first time since her original abduction by the Kraang, when she was huddled in the back of that filthy van. Someone was sent to save her, maybe, but no one saved her father, so she'll probably never be certain if anyone's listening. She refuses to falter nonetheless: _Our father who are in heaven, Hallow be the name. Our kingdom come, thy will be done...._

The turtles plunge through the water, ducking and dodging around bits of debris, scanning for the slightest flicker of green. They reach the Technodrome before it hits the bay floor; Raph grits his teeth and yanks at a set of dented panels, metal letting out a muffled _screech_ as it peels away beneath his hands. Raph's hands are bloody and bruised by the time they manage to swim through the ragged hole, but he barely notices. 

They make their way through the watery corpse of the Technodrome, past the bloated corpses of unlucky Kraang, straining their mechanical suits as they swell. Past the rooms full of monstrous experiments they can't look too hard at, past the room where April was almost forced to destroy her own planet, past halls and corridors that are empty, empty, empty.

They're using too much energy, they're not focusing on their lungs the way they're supposed to, they're running out of air. The painful tightness in their lungs is barely noticed, drowned out by the roar of _Leo, Leo, find Leo._ Find their leader, their big brother, their lion, the endlessly annoying dork they can't imagine life without.

Mikey spots him first and lets out a little shriek before he can stop himself, releasing a bubble of precious air. Leo's tangled up with the body of a Kraang, blood streamed from his forehead and side. His eyes are closed and he's _not moving._

Raph slices through the water and yanks him free, yanking and snapping in a blur that leaves Donnie terrified he'll accidentally break Leo's arm. Tears flow from Raph's eyes, fogging his vision as they float confusedly around his head, and he can't scream at himself or rub his eyes, can't do anything except bite his lip bloody because _this is not the fucking time_.

He rips Leo free and they rise together, all of them, Raph in the lead despite his brother's ridiculous heavy weight and Donnie besides him, frantically trying to judge their brother's condition. Mikey swims in their wake, unconcerned with the bubbles in his face or the extra tightness in his lungs.

Mikey yanks Leo's swords out of the Kraang as he goes, straining under their weight, so much greater than his precious nunchucks. He doesn't know how to hold them properly while he's swimming, cutting himself a few times as he goes. But he doesn't care because Leo loves these swords and Mikey knows he'll just dive back into the harbor to find them if he lost them (the fact that Leo will live long enough to miss his swords is a given, of course. _Of course)._

They emerge from the water with a crash, and April almost collapses at the sight because she'd been so scared that none of them would come up. Raph throws Leo over the side into the boat, and immediately regrets it because what if he just made things worse?

Then Mikey bursts out of the water, trembling under the weight of Leo's swords, because of _course_ the dummy was thinking more about those shitty things than the risk of falling behind his brothers. Raph lets a frustrated growl and shoves him over the side, too.

Donnie's already crawling into the boat, spitting water as he lays Leo out. In the harshly beautiful sunlight he can see the blood crusting on Leo's skin, surrounding holes that will become scars. He also sees how deathly still Leo's throat is, and wants to vomit.

"HE'S NOT BREATHING!" Raph screams, with a terror that puts anything he's ever felt regarding snakes or spiders to shame. Mikey vomits over the side, and April feels the world tilt sickeningly under her feet.

But Donnie's already throwing himself his brother, pumping his chest. One, two, one, two, _Staying Alive Staying Alive,_ he _hates_ that stupid fucking song.... He learns over to breath air into Leo's mouth, as the scent of minty toothpaste and damp stone rushes up his noses.

One, two, one two, and why didn't he steal a dummy to practice on? How could he be so fucking _stupid?_

"Come on, you fucking bastard," Raph hisses, looking like he'll march straight into the underworld for the express of ripping Leo's soul apart if he _dares_ to leave them. "Come _on...."_

One, two, one, two, and there's a terrible cracking sound as Leo's ribs fracture, every so slightly, under Donnie's desperate fingers.

"STOP!" Mikey screams hysterically, lunging for him. "YOU'RE HURTING HIM!" Raph tackles him away and they roll around the raft, screaming terrible things at each other. They're making the boat rock, but they're so lost in the horror and terror of it all that they've gone a little bit crazy and don't notice.

"QUIT IT!" Donnie barks as April frantically grabs at Leo's body to keep it from sliding away. "Quit it or I'll _kill_ you, I swear on my _life."_ They look into his wild red eyes, see that Donnie's gone a little bit crazy too, and don't push it.

One, two, one, two, and how long has Leo been gone? How long does it take before he starts to receive permanent damage? Are these things different for humans than for turtles? Donnie doesn't know, Donnie doesn't _fucking know_ when he practically _exists_ for the purpose of knowing things, and the thought makes him scream as he keeps pumping away.

And all of a sudden April can _feel_ it, feel what they're feeling. Their shock and pain and crushing fear are spilling into her throat, painfully thick. She understands what it's like to watch a piece of your soul crumble between your fingers and not be able to stop it. She claps her hands over her head as the frame of the boat begins to vibrate, sending a painful humming up through everyone's bones.

One, two, one, two, and Donnie isn't making bargains, isn't offering anything, because begging suggests weakness and he cannot be weak now. _Come back, or I'll build weapons to scorch every civilization I see come down from the sky. Come back, or I'll blow New York to smithereens. Come back, or I'll make a virus to kill the world._

_Come back, or I'll make everyone else suffer the way we do._

One, two, one, two, and it can't possibly have been so long but it feels like he's been here forever, trying to help his brother relearn how to breathe, kneeling to an implacable god. A part of him will always be here, he thinks, and if need be he will stay here until Leo rots.

His brother's eyes flicker open, and their color is the most beautiful thing Donnie has ever seen. It's more beautiful than April the night they met, more beautiful than a computer rebuilt with his own hands, more beautiful than flowers sprouting before a sewer grate.

Leo lets out a soft, pained gasp, and Donnie sobs as the tears start trickling down his face in earnest.

"He's okay," April sobs, as the boat abruptly fades into silence before it can shake apart. "Thank _fuck,_ he's okay...."

The others screams again, but this time is out of pure joy. They rush to his side and pull Leo glance, trying to hold on to him as tightly as they can without hurting his bruised ribs.

Leo blinks up at them from a web of green and white, a little disoriented, but knowing he's exactly where he belongs. He ignores his winces of pain to squeeze back, to relish their rich scents and their happy tears.

Their five pulses beat together, smooth and strong, a drumbeat loud enough to drown out all the horrors of the world.


	9. Intruder

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I got the "Casey hiding out with Raph" idea from Crowdog, by the way.

Leo wakes up and instantly something feels _wrong._ It's something in the air, in the ninja senses that he's been honing since before he could walk.

He sits up and swings his legs out of bed, bracing for the twinge of pain that sometimes appears when he stands up. As he makes his way to the door he slings on his swords, another instinct that's been drilled into him over the years, too.

The hallway is dark and silent as he makes his way to the Pit, where Karai's been sleeping as they work out another living situation for her. He pauses at each door, relishing the sound of his brothers' gentle breathing.

He steps into the main room, just to assure himself that everything's fine. It's silly, really, but he can never keep himself from this routine when the need strikes him, no matter how often everything turns out to be fi--

Oroku Saki stands before the TV, his adopted daughter's limp corpse impaled on his claws. "Hello, Leonardo," he says, and his voice is colder than falling snow and the icy pools that form at a construction site.

Leo can't move, can't breathe, can't draw his swords. "No," he rasps out, feeling his hands start to shake. "No no no you're _dead_ I _killed_ you."

"I have moved _beyond_ death, little monstrosity," the Shredder replies, flexing his arms so the terrible green veins flash in the light. "Your precious Sensei couldn't wipe you from this earth after a lifetime of trying. What makes you think _you_ were up to the task?"

Leo opens his mouth, trying to scream a warning to his brothers, but all that emerges is a choked whine. He finally manages to reach for his swords, but they slip through their fingers and clatter uselessly to the floor.

"I think...." says the Shredder, pulling his claws out of Karai with a nauseating _shhhk._ "I think I'll rip out your entrails, let you die slowly. I'll make you _watch_ as I exterminate the other vermin, one by one. I'll save little Michelangelo for last, of course." He walks closer, the bright silver of his helmet burning into Leo's eyes. "That is the proper order of things, isn't it?"

 _"Please,"_ Leo whispers, raising shaking hands. "Do whatever you want to me, but don't hurt the others, please _...."_

"Begging? Your father would be disappointed." He's so close now, Leo can feel too-warm breath burning his skin. He wants to run, curl his fingers into, _something_ , but nothing's responding. It's the time Saki beat him all over again, his nerves twisting and jerking out of his control, only this time the man doesn't even have to _touch_ him.

"Although I supposed I shouldn't have expected anything better from a beast of the gutter." The claws slam into his chest and they _hurt,_ they hurt so bad, he can _hear_ his own flesh ripping apart and he tries to scream but absolutely nothing comes out....

Leo sits up with a gasp and hunches over in bed, panting.

 _You're okay,_ he tells himself, rubbing his shaking arms to drive the feeling of cold and numbness away. _You're okay, he's dead, he's gone. They're safe. You're safe._

And then he hears footsteps in the hall.

Not his brothers footsteps, no, they always knew to walk silently when everyone else was sleeping, rather than risk stirring somebody's wrath with noisy clatter. Not Karai's, either; she had silence beaten into her as a child, and walks quietly by instinct. Whoever this is, their steps are audible, but slow and measured, as if they're taking their time.

_Or savoring the moment._

It's ridiculous, insane, that Leo could have a nightmare about a threat right before an actual threat appears, but so much of their life is ridiculous and insane, and he's already grabbing his swords as he dashes for the door.

He kicks it open and there's someone standing in the hallway. Leo sees wild eyes, hears a yelp of surprise, sees the glint of low light on human skin _the Shredder was so proud of his undamaged skin he always left it exposed on that stupid costume_.

But he will not be taken unawares again, _never again._ He swings his sword, screaming a battle cry as someone shouts his name--

And jerks to a halt, inches from decapitating Casey Jones as the boy collapses onto the carpet.

"Shit," Raph says, emerging from his room as the others poke their heads out of their rooms and Karai sits up with a shocked yelp. "Shit shit shit _shit."_

Leo blinks at them as he slips his swords back into their sheaths, his heart still thumping because he _almost killed Casey_ and _what the fuck is going on_ and _is he in boxers?_

"I told you to be _quiet!"_ Raph yells, stomping over to them.

"I _was_ ," Casey protests, crab-walking away from Leo's sword. "Or I was _trying,_ anyway." He staggers to his feet. "Jesus _Christ_ dude, you could have cut my _head_ off!"

"What the fuck is going on?" Karai asks, marching down the hall with her hair sticking out in all directions. Her gaze shifts from Casey to Leo, still sitting on the floor and trying to slow his heart rate down, and her eyes soften a little as she reaches to help him up.

"Are you kidding me?" Donnie demands, rounding on Raph. "You couldn't just admit you two were finally fucking, so you had to pull the secret boyfriend routine and scare the shit out of everyone? What, did you dig a tunnel to get him into your room or something?"

"It's not like that!" Raph squeaks, his voice reaching an impressively high octave.

"It's not?" Casey asks, looking confused.

Raph facepalms. "It's not _exactly_ like that."

"What happened to your pants?" Mikey asks, pointing at Casey's polka-dot boxers. "Nice color scheme, by the way. You don't see enough purple and white these days."

"I'm using your laundry right now," Casey moans, running his hands through his hair with the expression of someone who'd like to sink through the floor.

 _"Laundry?_ What the hell's wrong with the one in your building?" Donnie demands.

Casey sighs. "The building's not an option right now." Leo stiffens at the words.

"What does that mean?" Mikey asks. Leo sees comprehension flicker across Karai's face, a memory of her own ghosts.

Raph frowns and reaches for Casey's hand. "Case, you don't have ta..."

"It's okay," Casey says, voice firm. "Donnie's right, for once. The secret stuff was stupid; they deserve to know why Leo and I just freaked the hell out of each other."

He glances at his feet. "My Dad, he, uh....he was never really a good guy, but he started spiraling after my mom died. He.... Not all of the hurts I get are from kicking bad guy ass. If I go home once of us will probably end up in the hospital." He hugs himself. "Or worse."

There's a brief period of silence. "Oh," Leo says. "Okay." He shuffles his feet, suddenly feeling very tired. "Do you mind if I make some tea?"

"My sister's at a friend's," Casey explains as they gather in the kitchen. "The parents are good people, pretty much took her in at this point." He's squeezed into one of Karai's bigger leather jackets ("just shut up and wear it Jones, it's not a bra and Raph's the only one who wants to see your nipples).

"Why didn't you say anything?" Leo asks. Casey's fought at their side for years, he's literally watched the world burn with them, and this never came up? He doesn't know whether to be hurt or ashamed, and he suspects the other feel the same.

"Better yet, why didn't _you_ say anything?" Karai asks, giving Raph a significant look. She's sitting next to Leo, and they won't realize until later how much they look like disapproving parents.

"I begged him not to," Casey says quickly. "You guys were dealing with so much shit when he found out, I didn't want to put this on you, too. I...I was embarassed too, I guess. And then we were worried you'd get pissed at us for hiding it and--"

"And kick you out?" Donnie rolls his eyes. "Don't be ridiculous. You've managed not to kill each other, somehow, and if we got rid of you Raph would whine until the end of time." He peers at Raph thoughtfully. "How is Mr. Jones not hospitalized already, by the way?" 

"I wanted to kick his ass, but Casey wouldn't let me," Raph grumbles. Leo frowns; there was no way Casey could keep Raph from his dad, not if he really put his mind to it...not unless Casey threatened to leave should Raph try anything.

"It was my idea that he start leavin' his sister at the friend's and move in," Raph explain. "We'd act out him leaving for you guys, and then I'd stick him in my room. I slept in the hammock," he adds quickly, and Mikey can't hold back a little giggle. "It used to be just every once in a while, but his dad's not getting better, and...." He sighs. "Casey's already been, like _living_ here for a month."

"Do you want us to kick his ass now?" Karai says, and Leo doesn't doubt she's already planning it out in her mind. Mainly because he is, too.

Casey looks more thoughtful than Leo has ever seen him. "Nah, that'd just make things worse," he says. "Being left alone, that's the worst punishment for him and...." He looks down at his hands. "Maybe it'll convince him to sober up, I don't know." Leo doubts it, but he doesn't say anything.

The kettle whistles, and Leo stands up to pour his tea. "Thank you," he says to Casey.

Casey's brow wrinkles. "For what?"

"For not killing Raph." _And for not being Shredder._ "Sorry about, um, that," Leo adds, tapping his sword sheaths awkwardly as he sits back down and passes a cup to Karai.

"It's fi--" But Mikey is getting bored with all this, and probably wants to get the somber look out off Casey and Raph's eyes, so he lunges forward and asks, "So....were you guys already doing the kissy stuff when he moved in, or did it happen _because_ he moved in? Because that would be so cute if it only happened after--"

"None of your business, asshole," Raph growls.

"Isn't it?" Donnie's eyes are sparkling with the kind of concerned glee that only comes from teasing your sibling's romantic partners. "You guys are using protection, right?" He pulls on a thoughtful expression. "I'm going to have to give you both STD tests of course, God knows where you've been..."

"Fuck you!" Casey says, tackling Donnie, and then they're rolling around on the floor and Leo's trying to separate them as everybody talks and laughs and bitches some more about being woken up in the middle of the night.

And nobody mentions why Leo was so frightened, and so relieved to see Casey instead, because they already know why. But as he tries to drink his tea while simultaneously calming Casey down and trying not to laugh at Raph's red face, he can forget, at least for a little while.


	10. Journal

Leo finds the first book at the bottom of a sewer drain when he's twelve years old. It's the girliest thing imaginable, all flowery covers and waterlogged pages edged in pink. It's full of ramblings about boys and TV shows, the kind of thing a girl just stops needing after she's grown up a little.

His brothers mock it, and Leo does, too. Then he takes it home when they're not looking and stuffs it in his room. The idea of having paper all to himself, paper that isn't used for kanji practice and will never be seen by his brothers.

At first, he uses it to teach himself Naron. It's a language spoken by one of the alien races on _Space Heroes,_ so he can obviously never let anyone know he's speaking or writing it, ever. He found a dictionary to Naron a few years before the journal and treasured it because it reminded him that he wasn't a _total_ freak, that there was a hardcore fanbase somewhere out there, even if he'd never get to meet them.

He'd always learned through writing. It was how he'd mastered English before his brothers, learned to push the nuance of Japanese, even taught himself some Spanish so he could better grasp Sensei's telenovelas.

So he scratches out sentences like _M_ _y name is Leo_ and _Captain Ryan is the best_ in the journal, using the stupid, useless imaginary language that he's grown to love. For years, that's the only secret thing the journal contains.

The first time he writes something different was a few nights before their fifteenth birthday, when there are rumblings that his father might finally let them up. _I don't want to go,_ he confessed. He's fascinated by the stars, and he loves the underground, but the space between scared the shit out of him.

There are so many people out there who could hurt or terrorize them, to call them _monster_ and _animal_ and _freak._ It's a cowardly thought, of course, so he keeps it hidden behind the journal's covers and the extra shield of a language that not even Donnie or Splinter know.

Later, he finds himself writing, _I wish we hadn't found April._ It's a vicious, terrible thought, but he can't fend it off in time. April brings so many dangers with her, both because of the Kraang and simply by being human. What if she tells the government about them? What if she takes pictures and shows them to her friends?

Donnie loves her, but Leo barely knows her, not then. In the years to come he'll learn to trust April as a comrade arms and one of the greatest warriors he's ever known, looking back on these thoughts with shame, but tonight he's more scared of her than he is of the Kraang, and he has to tell _someone._

In the years to come he'll tell that journal, and many others that he's found or stolen, everything he can't tell his father or brothers. Some of the secrets are guilty little things, the kind you'd find in any teenager's diary. Some of the secrets are the things you might tell your psychiatrist, if you weren't a mutant and the only psychiatrist you knew got a little twitchy at the sight of you. Some of the secrets are the kind of things you can only put on paper, if even there.

It's usually only a few lines at a time, but they add up over the weeks and months and years.

_Donnie and Mikey are still mad at us over the "B-Team" thing. I mean, I didn't do it on purpose. At least, I don't_ think _I did._ _I really_ _couldn't think of another category...but I could have figured something out. Next time I will. I have to._

_Sometimes I want to strangle Raph. Does he want us all to get killed? Does he want me to know everybody's dead and it's all my fault?_

_Of course not, he just doesn't think. And neither do It, sometimes._

_Karai kissed me tonight. I think she just thought it was just a joke, but it tasted so nice. I threw up after she was gone. I really hope she didn't see it._

_I tried to kill Shredder today, and it felt_ ~~good~~ _interesting. I'd never used a missile launcher on anyone before. I didn't feel bad until Karai got mad at me....is that wrong? Should I have felt bad earlier? I thought someone was going to mention to Sensei, but no one did. Should I mention to him? I don't want to get in trouble, but it's not like blowing people up is part of the ninja code. But defending your clan is, right? Does that count?_

_Karai beat the crap out of April because we weren't there. Why weren't we there? Why didn't I post a guard behind? Karai was out for blood, I knew she was. What the fuck is wrong with me? Splinter was so mad when he found out about what happened to her, about what we let happen._

_Sometimes I think I'm jealous of how much Splinter likes April, almost like she's Miwa all over again. And then I think about how much April would hate it being compared to Miwa, treated like a replacement. Does she know about Miwa? She doesn't know about Miwa, does she?_

_I can hear the buzzing in the back of my head, from Parasitica. Maybe it'll go away if I don't tell anyone._

_It was kind of....soothing, being a part of a hive. Not that I'll ever tell anyone that._

_I still get dreams about Master Splinter being possessed by Falco. I get dreams about a lot of things._

_I had a dream about Karai sneaking into my room and doing things to me. Maybe it was sort of a nightmare, too. I was so scared, but it felt good. It's confusing._

_Running water makes me think of the Technodrome crashing. I think I've gotten pretty good at hiding it._

_It's so peaceful, down there in the blue. So quiet, with no one bothering you or needing you to help them or trying to kill you. It's like meditation, except you never have to worry about waking up and it's so easy to drift away. That's what scares me._

He cries, sometimes, water staining the pages. Looking at the spots later makes him feel the tiniest bit guilty, like he doesn't have the right to cry.

_Mikey asked me how to cope with nightmares about drowning, so I gave him some semi-bullshit breathing techniques and offered to sleep with him. I can't tell him that I don't know to make the nightmares go away._

_I'm just so MAD at April for leaving. Doesn't she know how sorry we are? Doesn't she know how bad she hurt Donnie?_

_It's irrational to be mad at her, of course. She's in pain and terrified. It doesn't matter how sorry we are, we fucked up. We're going to need to prove that we won't fail her again._

_I had a dream about Possessed Splinter eating Mikey while Raph played the guitar and Donnie played strip poker with April, Karai, and his robot. Resolved: Never, ever, ever eat pizza before bed again._

_Karai says I look pretty in a cage. I don't even know how to unpack that._

_After the Shellacne incident and whatever the fuck happened with Mutagen Man, I'm seriously considering locking Donnie out of his lab. He loves mad science so bad, he can watch TV like the rest of us._

_I found Raph crying in his room again, about Slash. He says he's sorry. I didn't tell him that I was only up because I kept thinking about what almost happened to Mikey and Donnie and if that little girl is going to get us in trouble._

_I think he would have told me if I asked Raph what he might have said to make Slash hate us so much. I'm too scared to ask. Maybe Raph didn't say anything, maybe he said everything._

_Casey Jones is a psychotic moron, and I think Raph's in love with him. And Casey's in love with April, so Donnie hates Casey. And everybody's bitching nonstop. I hate my life. Maybe if I threw them all in front of a train I'd finally get some sleep._

_April's been like us all along. If she's psychic, did that mean the only reason she ever let us into our life is because she picked up on our emotions or something?_ _I thought April liking us meant that we could be accepting by normal, everyday people someday. Now I don't know. We're back to the blind cook and the lunatic in the bandanna._

_Karai's my sort-of-sister. I'm in love with her and she wants me dead, or maybe she doesn't. Why did Splinter tell me this? Why doesn't he tell her? Does he not know what to do, either?_

_I can't sleep. I have to check to make sure they're all alive, and then I have to go over again because what if I missed something? I had a dream where Karai showed up and killed everyone, and told me I was pretty. Sometimes when I hear Captain Ryan's voice I think of their dead bodies._

_Burn in hell, Humongous. I'm so glad I killed you. I hope it hurt._

Every time he fills up a book, the ritual is the same. Sneak out to the junkyard, light the match, and watch his hidden worries and weaknesses go up in smoke. That's the idea, anyway.

_Found Donnie crying over Metalhead again. He says he's scared if he rebuilds him he might turn against us again, or we'll lose him again. What the fuck am I supposed to say? How do I make this better?_

_Everyone's mad at me for asking Splinter's help about Tiger Claw. He's our FATHER, isn't he? He's supposed to help us. No, no, I'm supposed to handle everything on my own, remember? Not endanger my father unnecessarily._

_And Karai hates me now. I cried. I'm just glad no one could see me. I'm not a liar. I'm NOT. Splinter's right. He's always right. Karai's family and we're going to bring her home._

_I knew I should have decapitated that stupid fucking snapping turtle._

_I don't like the way Bradford looks at Mikey. I don't like the way Tiger Claw looks at me. I can't put words on these things._

_Mikey says he's fine when he talks about Leatherhead. He spends most nights sleeping with me, anyway. He cries, but only in his sleep._

_~~WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH EVERYONE WHY DON'T THEY WANT TO SAVE KARAI SHE SAVED MY LIFE DO WE EVEN KNOW WHAT SHREDDER'S DOING TO HER SHE COULD BE~~ _

_Calm down._

_Calm down._

_It was stupid, letting Karai into the lair. I can't make mistakes like that again._

_Mikey isn't talking to us about what happened in Dimension X. I'm scared to pry, and I'm even more scared for him keeping quiet forever._

_I cried myself to sleep again. Every time I close my eyes--every time I blink--I see her fall._

_I failed Karai, for the millionth time. What's wrong with me? She must be so scared. No wonder she doesn't want anything to do with us. I'm such a fucking moron._

_I won't fail my family, ever again._

There's a long stretch where he doesn't write at all; he can't. When he wakes up he wanders around the house, as stealthily as he can in his current state, and eventually finds a notepad to fill with careful Naron scribbles.

He pours all of his broken parts onto the paper, where no one can see, and leaves them there while he works at being a leader and a brother.

_I see him everywhere. When I turn the corner, or after I've just turned the corner. I feel him standing behind me. I've been making an effort not to wear swords all the time so I don't freak people out, but I've always got knives in my wrappings._

_Father isn't dead. He can't be dead. I'll go crazy if he's dead._

_Raph spent months at my side and I failed him. I couldn't keep him safe, and now he can't talk about what that goddamn plant did._

_Shredder made me beg for the right not to have my legs broken. And then he did it anyway. He made me kneel. He made me cry. I could taste the blood in my throat._

_All of those fuckers were standing there, just smiling. Like I was nothing, like I was a stupid little boy who got what was coming to him. Like I hadn't just beaten those assholes with my bare hands._

_I have dreams where it's Splinter instead of Shredder, and my brothers instead of the goons, trying to toughen me up._

_I have whole days where the pain doesn't stop. Thank God I've got a good poker face._

_Sometimes my right eye goes blurry. It's definitely nothing._

_He said that my father was a monster, and it was fitting for monsters to raise beasts. He said I was too ugly for Karai to love, that she laughed at me behind my back._

_I don't know if Karai's dead or alive. I don't know if the Kraang got her. Does she hate us for leaving her behind?_

_Everything out here is trying to kill us. I can't keep them safe. I can't do anything. I'm useless._

_He said that I hadn't earned the right to be put out of my misery. He said that he wanted to see whether Hamato Yoshi was desperate enough to keep a worthless cripple around._

_I had a dream where I was stapled to a wheelchair and Raph was sewing squirrels onto the curtains while the house burned down._

_There are archers in the trees, sometimes. There is snow when it's supposed to be sunny. These are signs of weakness, I know they are, no matter what Donnie says about PTSD._

_Those fucking beavers somehow made everything even worse._

_Donnie found me passed out from the pain after I overexercised and said he's going to get me some help. I wanted to laugh. I shouldn't laugh._

_I defeated Saki on the astral plane, but I still have nightmares. I thought I was going to get better._

_I should have let April come with us. I just....I was scared. There are so many ugly things in her DNA--I saw what her mother can do, I saw what the Chimera almost made her do. She's strong, she's good, she's wise...but I'm not ready to let her that close to us, not yet._

_It's cowardly, I know, and cruel. I need to get over it, and fast, before I hurt her in a way I can't make up for._

When he goes back to the city he has less time to write, what with the training and fighting and trying to keep his family alive. He's gotten better at hiding himself away, too, and starts feeling like there are some things he shouldn't put on paper, even if he's the only one who can read them. He puts it down anyway, because he has to.

_Donnie gave me pills. He won't tell me where they from, and he's super-careful about how much I take, but it makes the pain a bit better._

_Raph trashed his room after we got him back from the brain worm, and he won't talk about anything._

_Every time I see his scar I feel so, so scared and sick. I'm afraid it's going to happen to one of us again. I'm afraid it's going to happen to me._

_I think Mikey has a crush on that motherfucking gecko._

_I shouldn't have told Donnie to try harder. That was shitty of me. Should I apologize? Is that admitting weakness?_

_It happened to Karai. It happened to Karai. I should have found her, I should have SAVED her, it should be ME with that goddamn worm in my head. At least then Shredder would be stuck with a defective weapon. And everybody's so scared, and April almost died....what is it doing to her? Is she awake in there? Can she see and not do anything? Oh God, please don't let her be awake...._

_Raph's been drinking. I think it started while I was asleep, but it's getting worse now._

_Tang Shen had to die for us to live, and Miwa had to lose her childhood. We're here because of a blood sacrifice, and I have to write that down because we are never, ever going to be able to talk about it._

_Mikey found Raph unconscious in a puddle of his own vomit after Tang Shen and woke me up. So much for us trying to hide it from him._

_I am such a fucking idiot, I almost got Mikey killed today because of a crush. What the fuck is wrong with me?_

_It freaks me out that Donnie was happier when he was an idiot._

_Karai's free, now. Karai's free, but Donnie sometimes jumps when he hears electricity buzzing and Mikey wakes up screaming whenever he sleeps on his back and I found Raph passed out drunk again and Splinter isn't talking to anyone._

_It's worth it. It has to be. Please let it be worth it._

In space he writes on a data pad, wiping it after each use.

_I can't do this. I CANNOT do this. I can barely keep three brothers alive. I can't lead the team that saves the world. I can't._

_I have to. Don't be weak. Don't be stupid. You have no choice._

_I'm a little mad at Raph for finding that stupid dinosaur in the first place, although I shouldn't be._

_Sometimes I feel like I'm drowning up here. I don't know how Captain Ryan did it. ~~Because he was a fictional character.~~_

_Fugitoid can't fix me. One of the smartest beings in existence can't take the pain away without pills. I shouldn't hate him for that._

_I have dreams of swimming in the stars with Karai. I have dreams of watching Karai eat herself alive. Sometimes they're the same dream._

_Donnie asked if he he could sleep with me for the first time since he was eight. He spent the entire night ranting about everything he was scared and guilty about, and I reassured him because that's what big brothers do. At least I didn't have a fucked-up dream about Karai this time._

_I'm so scared, and it's not getting better. We're all scared, I think. Nobody's sleeping very well._

_April told me that she's been getting "dangerous vibes" from Casey and she's scared he's going to hurt himself. I told Donnie and Raph to keep an eye on him. Then after Casey stopped talking for a day I had Raph distract him while I removed the sharp objects from his cabin._

_He yelled at us for putting him on suicide watch and punched Mikey when he asked if he wanted to talk about his feelings. Raph was sitting outside his door for hours._

_Mikey started laughing after the brain things, and he wouldn't stop. He. Wouldn't. Stop. I was scared, even more scared than usual. Then he started crying, and then he was screaming and breaking things. It took ages for him to calm down, and then I had to hold him while he cried again._

_We're all losing our minds up here._

_I had a dream about everybody drowning in a pool of Mikey's tears while Captain Ryan read Shakespeare._

_I still see Shredder up here, even though I know that's impossible. I still hear his voice. I still feel his claws on my body. I see archers when we're on an alien planet, even though literally no one out here uses arrows._

_Why can't I get over this?_

_April has been having nightmares and blowing things up in the process. The Fugitoid has been giving her sleeping pills. He says the maker has to produce them individually, so we can't have bottles of them lying around even though it''s more convenient. I think he's lying._

_I was so stupid on the Aeon planet. How did I give in, even for a few minutes? What's wrong with me?_

_Mikey set a fire in the kitchen and I punched him in the throat. I was just so stressed and scared, and whenever I see fire I think of Tang Shen. It's no excuse, of course. There aren't enough sorries._

_I've been fighting Shredder in the holodeck. Correction: I've been_ killing _Shredder in the holodeck, over and over again, in a lot of different ways. I'm terrified of someone walking in on me. How do I explain this?_

_I want Shredder dead, more than anything else in the world. That's how I explain this._

_No. Saki. Call him Saki. That name is stupid and childish. He doesn't deserve having someone to play along with it._

_Raph found space booze and got really drunk. He almost died, so we had to pump his stomach. Afterwards Donnie blew things up in the holodeck for three hours. He says Raph has a problem, and Raph said we're his problem._

_I got mad at him for being so flippant and blew a gasket while everyone else was gone. I was so STUPID, I spilled about some of my nightmares and some of the things I've been seeing. Raph has enough to deal with, and fuck, what if he tells Donnie?_

_Donnie and Mikey have been asking questions. I wish Raph had overdosed. No, I don't._

_I think Donnie is going through my stuff. Thank god for Naron. Or maybe no one's watching me, and I'm as batshit crazy as I feel._

_I want to go home._

Leo comes home. While his brothers sleep and sniffle in their beds, he goes to steal a fresh notebook from an office supplies store. He sits on his bed, headphones blaring the kind of angry music he never listen to when his family is awake, scribbling away.

_Professor Honeycutt was a_ ~~_cunt traitor hero sociopath manipulator friend foe monster_ ~~ _complicated character. I honestly can't decide if I miss or hate him more._

 _Donnie asked if I was trying to kill himself with that scout ship thing. I didn't know what to say. It's not like I could tell him how lonely I feel, how terrified, how I had to do_ something _to make up for all my fuck-ups because what else can I do?_

_Sacrificing myself for my family, it's what I've been ~~built~~ trained for. There was never an option._

_And I....I wanted to make the pain go away, too. And then I was scared and I didn't want to die, but I kept going. Then there was another option, so I could stop. So that's that._

_The other me, when we were saying goodbye, asked if the nightmares went away. I lied and told him yes. Maybe it'll be easier for them up there if they don't have a world to save, I don't know._

_Maybe they'll kill each other._

_We're going to keep fighting Shredder, and more people are going to suffer, and I was stupid to think things will get better. I should have killed Shredder when I had the chance, but I didn't, because I had to set a good example for my brothers, show Father I hadn't lost my shit the way everyone probably thinks after what happened up there. I can't kill in front of them, can't condone it. Not in front of them._

_I saw archers when we were going home._

_Father's going to die, isn't he? Again. Maybe during this war, maybe in a few years or decades, but he'll die. And I'll have to take care of them. And if the prospect makes me break now, makes me want to throw up and tear out my hair I don't have, what will it be like then?_

_Shouldn't I be used to it? I mean, he's gone often enough. I shouldn't have said that. Master Splinter is always right ~~except when he fucks up by working with the enemy or letting him live.~~_

_I don't know. I still need him, no matter what. I need him, and if things go_ right _he'll be gone before I am._

_I'll bear it. I think I will, anyway. I'll pour myself out on a bunch of these stupid books until all the bad stuff gets drained away, and then I'll go load up on more bad stuff. And I'll live. Somehow. Or I'll die. Maybe Karai can help with the living, or the dying._

_I'm so tired of this. So fucking tired of all this shi--_

The pen snaps off in his hand.

Fuck. Leo looks down and sees that he's managed to switch from Naron to English halfway through, so anyone can read this.

Double fuck. He rips out the pages and crumbles them in a ball, shredding them before tossing them in his trash can. He'll have to burn them tomorrow night, when he feels less like he's just been hit by a ton of bricks.

He collapses on the bed, staring at the ceiling, the pen still clutched loosely in his hand.

And then...then he finds Karai again, at long last. And he's furious at her for being gone so long, for disappearing with some friend he's never heard of, but he's also....tempted, he supposes, by the prospect of disappearing, too. Of melting into a cause the way he melts into a journal.

She extends her hand, and he takes it. She suggests a new costume, and he finds something black, like pen ink and the space that can swallow your mind and offer you salvation all in one gone.

He gets another new journal, but instead of paper he's writing on the fabric of the city, sharing his rage, fear, and brokenness with the criminal underworld. Instead of pen or pencil, he writes in fire and blood and steel, and it's a relief like he's never known.

 _You shouldn't have hurt me,_ he tells the city, in this way. _You shouldn't have left us to suffer. You shouldn't have made me do everything, and then try to tell me I couldn't do anything._

Maybe he'll give it up to be a good son again, maybe he won't. All he knows is that for a moment, he can relish the sense of spilling his secret self to everyone, and becoming stronger from it instead of weaker. 


	11. Kinetics

Kinetics is the study of reaction rates and how they are affected by exterior factors. It was a branch of chemistry, not physics, but Mona Lisa had learned about in high school anyway. Her classmates had been fascinated by the rapid bubbling of acid, but Mona had been just as intrigued by the slower reactions, the ones that would sneak up on you if you weren't careful.

The shockwave from Old Hob's mutagen bomb was a bit like that. It crept at you slowly, unobtrusively, before spiraling into one of the fastest and most brutal reaction rates Moa had ever seen. The effects were described in the media as "destructive," but the word Mona heard a lot of people using was "apocalyptic."

Case in point: she was sitting at her desk with the window open when it happened, because Mona was one of those crazy people who felt energized by car exhaust and screeching engines, peering down at her physics textbook. She was chewing her lip in thought, an action that her ex had found sexy at the beginning of their relationship, and said would chap her mouth near the end.

There were no warnings, no nightmares, no tingling scar to give her a premonition. She didn't even know that Mayor Stockman was having a rally tonight.

Then she heard an explosion in the distance, almost, but not quite like a car backfiring. When glanced out the window she thought she saw a faint flash of green, but before she could start to wonder what the hell that was she heard the screaming begin. Screaming, peppered with gunfire. Her heart stopped beating for a second.

She leaned precariously out the window, hair fluttering in the wind, trying to make out what was going on. Was it coming this way? Should she hide under her bed, or keep an eye out in case she needed to run?

Her skin startled to tingle and she leaned back in, rubbing at her hands with a frown. Then her roommate, Rachel, was barging through the door with a look of pure terror on her face. She grabbed Mona by the shoulder and yanked her away from the window, slamming it shut with a bang.

Mona gaped at her. "What the fu--"

"Where's the stapler?" Rachel demanded, yanking the sheets from her bed and knocking the textbook aside with a clatter.

" _What--"_

"I saw the TV in the common room and a _cat_ set off a bomb that turns people into _monsters_ so where's the _fucking_ stapler," Rachel snarled, rounding on her with wild eyes.

Mona's mouth dropped open; she couldn't have answered if she tried. Rachel spotted the stapler on a nightside, and started gathering up the sheets to press to the window. She lifted the stapler and slammed it into the wall, stapling in a corner of the sheet with a _bang._ Mona winced at the sound, rubbing her hands harder; the tingling was getting worse, it had started to hurt.

Outside, Mona heard the squeal of tires. "Everyone's freaking out," Rachel tossed over her shoulder. "Those _things,_ they were at the mayor's rally, my God, Mona, they--" She jerked to a halt and the stapler clattered to the ground. The sheets crashed to the floor, taking the staples Rachel had put up and some of the paint with them.

Rachel whirled to face Mona, lifting a shaking hand. "Your...your face..."

As if triggered by her words, there was a small, sharp pain in the side of Mona's face. She reached out to touch it, and what her fingers landed on was not remotely human.

Mona dropped to her knees and threw up, vomit spewing across the floor.

"You're exposed," Rachel breathed, staggering away from her. Her hands felt wildly along the wall, toward the door. "Oh, Mona...I'm so sorry...." Her lips were moving, saying more, but then Mona's feet were straining against the confines of her shoes and there was a pain like a sharp knife in her back. Everywhere else was tingling so bad, until the brush of her skin against the carpet made her want to pass out.

Rachel threw the door open and dashed out into the hallway, her footsteps melting into a storm of pounding feet and shouting voices. There was a _thud_ of something impossibly heavy hitting the floor, sending vibrations through the room. A girl's high-pitched scream gargled and warped into a wolf's howl.

The reaction rate was increasing, building into a tidal wave that would take everything down.

Mona's shoes exploded, and _something_ tore its way out of her back.

Mercifully, she passed out.

Mona woke up and the pain and tingling were gone, but everything felt _wrong._ The floor felt different against her skin, and her shoes were lying in ruins around her. Her shirt hung strangely flat against her chest, and when she moved her head....she had no fucking idea _what_ was coming out of her head, but it wasn't hair.

_And where the fuck was her nose?_

She retched again, phlegm mixing with the rot on the floor. When she tried to pull herself up with a groan, she happened to glance down at her feet and screamed at the massive monstrosities protruding from her legs.

And wrapped around her feet was....something in Mona's spine flexed on instinct and her _Jesus-Mary-Joseph_ _tail_ slammed into the floor, sending her crashing back to her knees again.

She wrapped her fingers in the hair that-wasn't-hair and screamed, long and loud. Tears spilled from her eyes and she held on to that, the fact that she could still cry.

After a while, she forced herself to her feet, digging her shaking fingers into the desk and refusing to look down at her body. She lifted her head and found herself looking out the window.

She could see at least one burning building, and maybe some others in the distance. A woman with what looked like horns was dangling from a lamppost by a noose, and there were several red spots on the concrete that Mona's eyes could literally not focus on.

Two different cars had crashed on the road, sparks issuing from their smoking wrecks. A girl was lying in front of one of the wrecks, bloodied and broken as if she'd been hit while running across the street in a blind panic. Her purple hair spilled across the street, streaked with red.

Rachel had purple hair. Rachel, who had left her to die, and Mona suspected she might have done the exact same thing in her place.

There was a broken cry from overhead, and Mona saw a boy topple from the top of a building, furry arms flashing in the firelight as he fell. He hit the ground with a wretched-sounding _splat_ , bits of crimson and white flying everywhere.

A part of Mona wanted to join him. Another, stronger part of Mona quaked with a fresh wave of fear, a fear of dying that was greater than fear of this new life, and turned away.

If she was going to live, then at some point she was going to move. Mona gritted her teeth and made her way down the silent hallway, swaying from side and occasionally gripping the wall (or falling over) as she struggled to manage her new feet and tail.

She used the bathroom and grabbed some wet towels to clean up the mess in her room. It was difficult to walk what with the glass lying all over the floor, thanks to every single mirror being shattered by what must have been a bunch of angry fists

Mona found herself bending down, wincing as she tried not to topple, and picking up a particularly large shard of glass. The flashes she caught in made her feel dizzy and disoriented, because _this was not Mona Lisa,_ not the face she'd worn for an _entire fucking lifetime_ _._

There was a wild impulse to run the shard along her arm, but she forced herself to breathe, to _focus._ Her eyes were a little different, but they were the same color, a shade inherited from one of her grandmothers. Her hair felt _wrong,_ but it _looked_ the same, and so was her rubbery skin. The shape of her face had changed, but it still responded to her commands.

She was still herself, whatever that meant. And Mona Lisa's parents had raised her into a person who did not break, did not even bend. She was going to find out _what the fuck was going on_ and she was going to fix it if she could, but more importantly she was going to _survive._

She was cleaning up in her room when her mother called, and her newfound resolve shattered. Mona wanted to lie under the sheets with the blankets pulled up over her head until the end of time, if not longer.

But instead she found herself grabbing it for the phone, thanking god that her fingers hadn't changed that much, and held it to her shaking ear, trying not to brush the spikes. "Mom?" she asked.

 _"Baby? Oh, thank god."_ Her mother sounded weak with relief. _"We....it was an off day, we slept late, we didn't find out until a few minutes ago. I'm so sorry."_

"It's okay," Mona told her, even though it really wasn't because there were bodies in the street outside and no one had appeared to clean them up. "How is everyone?" She could hear them her father and brothers to each other in the background, their muffled voices tinged with anxiety.

 _"Scared,"_ her mother said. _"Your dad's getting the car ready so we can come pick you up."_ The bottom dropped out of Mona's stomach. _"Which refugee camp are you in? The TV said there were a few different ones for the evacuees."_

Mona gripped the phone so hard she was afraid she'd break it. "I....I'm not in a refugee camp," she admitted.

 _"Okay, so where are you?"_ Her mother didn't sound angry, didn't sound scared, as if it hadn't ever occurred to her that Mona might have changed.

Maybe she didn't think Mona would be able to speak if she had.

"Mom," Mona said, hands fisting in her pants as the tail twitched against her leg, feeling oddly comforting. "I wasn't evacuated. The...." She sucked in a breath, remembering what Rachel had said last night. "The bomb. It got me."

Silence.

" _Oh,"_ her mother breathed, voice more heartbroken than Mona had ever heard it. _"Oh, my baby."_

"I'm sorry," Mona whispered, unable to hold back a soft sob.

 _"No, no, it's okay,"_ her mother said. _"I...are you hurt? Can you...walk? Breathe?"_

"It doesn't hurt," Mona told her. _Anymore._ "I...I can move okay. It'll get easier with practice. I have a tail, now." She bit back a burst of hysterical laughter, because she was in _college_ and she had a _tail_ and Jesus fucking Christ what was going on?

 _"I have to tell the_ _others,"_ her mother said, sounding unmistakably horrified at the idea. _"I...can I call you back, baby?"_

"Sure," said Mona, phone shaking in her hand. "Take as long as you need."

Her mother hung up. Mona curled up on her bed, shaking, and started to sob.

Once she had cried herself out, she forced herself to go online. There was a Youtube video of the election (with nearly a billion hits), which is how Mona Lisa learned that she'd been turned into something called a _mutant._ And she wasn't even the first of her kind, apparently.

Her jaw dropped. There'd been an entire underground society of mutants running around New York for _years,_ if the newscasters were telling the truth. They'd been hunted, killed, suffered from whatever had happened to those two giant turtles stumbling around the video like drones.

However, Mona's pity was all too quickly burned out by her anger. Those dumb fucks were treated badly by the government, sure, but _this_ was their reaction? Make everything a million times worse? She glanced out at the street; the nearest fire had burnt out, but there was at least one more body on the street. And that was just _here._ What was it like everywhere else?

On social media, people were posting about mass suicides, about mothers killing their mutant children, about looting and muggings, about hospitals burned down because they couldn't produce a cure. The police were swamped, especially since so many had fled or killed themsleves, and at least one had gone crazy and killed half a dozen people down before his fellow officers took him down.

She tried to text her friends, but only one person replied, and apparently they'd been evacuated. Mona couldn't let herself think of what had happened to the others.

She made herself stand up and look down at herself, at the tail that she'd started automatically pressing against the floor to maintain herself, at the breasts that had completely disappeared.

People had given Mona plenty of labels over the years, and she'd always rejected the ones she didn't like for the ones she fit. She knew what she was: a sister, a daughter, a student, a future scientist, a Black woman, bisexual, smart, determined, nerdy, sexy on her own terms and no one else's.

Now she had a new label: _mutant._ And she couldn't walk away from that until someone found a cure, which the online world didn't seem very certain of.

So she was just going to live this on her own terms, too. Somehow.

Her family called back. They spoke on speaker, her brother's voices babbling over each other as her parents fought to get a word in edgewise. Adam wanted to know if she could shapeshift, Napoleon (Leon) wanted to know if she had sharp teeth, David asked if she was going to start shedding (oh God, _was_ she?), Vincent compared her to a Spider-Man villain with a very uncreative name, and Washington asked her if she was now twenty feet tall.

And Campbell, in a very small, very scared voice, asked if she ate people now.

The phone was yanked away at that point, which was could because Mona had instantly felt the urge to either scream at him or burst into tears. She could hear her brothers yelling at each other in the background as her parents asked her over and over again how she was, because she didn't know what else to say.

"The EPF's quarantining the area, putting up some temporary walls," her father told her, voice shaking a little. "The scientists are working on a cure, though."

"And until then I can't leave," Mona finished, looking at her feet.

"You'll be okay," her mother said firmly. "You'll be home sooner than anything, and everything will be just fine. We _love_ you."

The phone was passed from parent to parent, from brother to brother, and everyone said that they loved. She knew they meant it, too, even Campbell, no matter how confused and frightened he was.

She also knew that nobody would suggest a Face Time until she back to normal. And she had no idea when that would happen, when she would see them again.

There were no classes, what with so many teachers being evacuated or mutated or dead, but hunger still lured her outside. Mona crept through the halls and onto the campus, pepper spray in hand. Other students drifted here and there across the grass, not speaking to each other. There was no classes. Some of the people she saw were wearing blankets or hoods over their heads, hiding their new bodies from the world.

The rate of reaction had slowed down at the initial burst of chaos, but it was still happening. It would probably never stop.

Mona could smell smoke as she walked, could see blood in the cobblestones. She raised her head high, forcing herself not to stop and stare.

The cafeteria was empty, but a restaurant on the edge of campus was still functioning. The woman behind the counter wore mufflers over her cat ears and a blank expression, handing out food mechanically.

"Thank you," Mona said to her, because you shouldn't give up on manners just because the world had ended.

"My dog mutated," the woman said, not meeting her eyes. "He's in my apartment, drinking my bourbon and trying to talk to the people on TV. I went to work so I didn't have to explain _American Idol_ to him."

"Okay," said Mona, nodding. "Okay." What else could she say?

The government did not have a cure for mutants, unless you count "cure" as turning the temporary walls into permanent ones. Mona turned on the TV in the common area and watched people gathered on both sides of the wall, screaming in protest. The soldiers on the human side formed a wall of riot shields while the men worked, asking for the populace to remain calm during this difficult time.

They fired on the mutants without a word.

That night, Mona sat in her dark room, staring at Rachel's empty bed as gunfire rang in her head and falling bodies danced in front of her eyes. She talked to her parents over her phone, as they raged over the mutants' mistreatment while simultaneously trying to reassure her that everything was all right, that the government could fix its mistakes.

Mona prayed that they were right, even if she wasn't sure anyone was listening.

And then....then. Days stretched into weeks, made their way towards months. The reaction rate slowed down, now that everyone who could be mutated in the area had been mutated.

Mona kept reading her physics textbook and finding online assignment, even if there was no one left to teach her. She had to do _something,_ had to make the education she'd worked so hard for worth it in some small way.

The mutants Mona passed on the street were talking to each other again, since this obviously wasn't a crazy dream they were all having and they couldn't just drift around waiting for Tony Stark or something to come out of the sky and save them all.

They didn't talk about the actual mutation. They talked about food supplies, or the latest news, or the smell from a neighbor who had hung themselves, or the struggle of keeping a relative alive in a tank.

A lot of people took the opportunity to Mona how lucky she was to still look so much like herself. Mona smiled and shrugged and didn't tell them how she sometimes wanted to vomit when she woke up in the morning, all the same.

They talked about the Mutanimals, and Mona found herself getting in a few fights with mutants who were thinking of actually _joining_ the fuckers who had _started_ this goddamn mess. Apparently they had a recruitment site, although it was undoubtably monitored by the NSIS.

"At least they're trying to help," they'd say, shrugging. "You can't say that for anyone else." And Mona would see some of them on the street later, swaggering along in their monogrammed shirts. She hated their logo in particularly--who the fuck steals a symbol of Anarchy and reinterprets them for neofascists?

She told her family about the physics, and the less disturbing details from the textbooks she'd read. Most of them, she tried to get them to talk to her instead. Her siblings were more than eager to spill about school projects and adolescent dramas, while her parents racked their brains form interesting stories at work.

Mona told them how much she missed them, but she didn't tell them how scared she got sometimes. She'd only make them more scared in return.

People started coming by to pick up the bodies, although often they were EPF men in gas masks.

"Where are you going?" Mona asked, as they dumped the limp body of a girl with dry, crinkly gills and blood crusting her mouth into a trunk. They ignored her.

"Hey," she said, raising her voice and taking a few steps toward them, shoving down the memories of gunfire because they wouldn't shoot her this deep in mutant territory, they _wouldn't._ "You're bringing her back to her family, right?"

"None of your business," one of the soldiers muttered, not even bothering to dress it up with a 'ma'am.'

"She's a _person,"_ Mona reminded him, firmly, marching even closer. "She deserves to be given back to her family."

Another man let out a harsh laugh. "You freaks don't deserve _shit."_ He loomed over her, butt on his gun. "Now get out the way, or I'll shoot you and we'll set up cameras to see how long it takes the rest of the circus act to eat your body."

Mona wanted to snap back, but her blood had turned to ice and her lungs had stopped working. She started up at him, blood freezing in her brains as her lungs stopped walking.

The man snorted and rejoined his colleagues. They piled back into the car and drove away, leaving Mona standing there, frozen.

She managed to get back to her apartment before breaking down in tears, thank God. Afterwards, she washed her face and glared at her shattered reflection.

"You name is Mona Lisa Beuragard," she told herself firmly. "Your grandparents protested in the Civil Rights Marches. Your parents taught you to be strong and stand up for yourself. You got a physics course in one of New York's top colleges when people assumed that because of your race and gender, you would be too poor to afford it or too dumb to make it. You are not going to let those _fuckers_ push you around."

And then she strode out of the bathroom, head high.

Somewhere around the fourth month, the reaction rate spiked again. There was a fresh brace of suicides as people realized a cure wasn't coming anytime soon and got tired of trying to handle their newfound bodies. A rabbit-woman Mona had been talking to said that a lady they both knew, one with a child in a tank, had fed her daughter sleeping pills before getting in the tank with her and slitting her wrists.

People started to crack under the pressure. Mona would find men or women, even kids, sprawled on the ground, drunk or drugged out of their minds. She did her best to help, to get their relatives' contact information or at the very least haul them into the city position. She found herself using her tail to help carry particularly heavy people, and admitted it have its uses as an extra limb.

She didn't know just _how_ useful it could be, however, until the day she was heading back to her room and heard a kid saying, "Heeeeey....Venus. It's Venus, right? Is it Venus?" as she entered the hallway.

"It's Mona Lisa," she muttered, holding her bag of food close. Her parents hadn't cancelled her debit card, thank God, but prices were rising even for New York and even if Mona occasionally resorted to dumpster diving, there just wasn't that much food around.

"Mona, yeah, right." He swaggered over to her, his eyes bright and his clawed fingers flexing mindlessly. "Hey, so, my girlfriend jumped off a bridge last week and life has just gone to _shit,_ so..." He grabbed her wrist, fingers digging into her skin. "Wanna get crazy with me?"

Panic shot through Mona, white-hot. "Get the _fuck_ away from me!" she shrieked, kicking him in the shin. Her foot bounced, painfully, off armor-thick scales.

"Whoa, calm down," he said, pressing her against the wall. "It's just us, y'know?" His breath was full of booze and his eyes kept crossing and it was so fucking _cliched_ that she wanted to scream. Drunk guy cornering a girl in a hall; she'd seen it happen in so many teen dramas she'd lost count? 

But that's where the strongest cliches come from, isn't it? Reality. Girls get raped by drunk guys all the time, it's why we tell stories about them.

She tried to hit him, and he grabbed her wrists, pinning them over her head with one hand. She tried to kick him, and he pressed his muscular legs against hers. "I've never had a black girl before," he breathed in her ear. She feel his hardness against her groin, and an insane little part of her mind whispered _what if the mutagen made it too big?_

She screamed and her tail _thwacked_ against her legs. He let out a fist of annoyance and grabbed it in his free hand. Mona sucked in a breath of concentration and _yanked,_ sending the guy crashing to the floor with a growl.

"You _cu--"_ He was cut off with a scream of pain as her tail _cracked_ him across the face like a whip. From a distance, Mona saw herself draw it back and hit him again.

And again.

And again.

Again and again, screaming incoherent things all the while. She wasn't just hitting him, she was hitting the fuckers who had set off the bomb in the first place, the EPF bastards who were making everything worse. She was hitting the man who had threatened her for fun, hitting the people who wanted to turn dead children into science experiments or just toss them on the kiln.

When she stopped, there was blood on her tail and she could hear people coming up the stairs. The guy was curled up on the floor, breathing gently as bubbles of blood popped from his mouth.

She had to leave. It didn't matter that she had nowhere else to go, it didn't matter that she was lucky to have a place to live at all. She had to leave and never come back, and she had to pray that the guy wouldn't die because she _wasn't a killer please don't let me be a killer._

Mona dashed down the stairs, shoving the new arrivals aside and ignoring their confused shouts as she dashed out the door. She ran and ran, letting the night swallow her up.

When she finally collapsed, she'd been running for god knows how long. Her lungs were killing her and her muscles were screaming and there _was still blood on her tail._

"You okay?" a voice asked. She looked up, panting, to see a white fox standing over her, a sack over her shoulder and a... _pickaxe?_ in her hand. Her eyes were so soft and kind, and Mona burst into tears at the sight.

"Whoa, hey," said the fox, kneeling down at her side. "It's all right, breathe."

She helped Mona to her feet and let her lean on a furry shoulder. "It's okay," she said, holding her close. "Breathe with me, it's all right."

"Who....?" Mona rasped out, because she had to say something, and what if this fox turned out to be dangerous as everyone else?

"My name's Alopex," the fox said, running a gentle hand through her hair. "You're safe with me."

Alopex took her back to her shelter, a ramshackle place filled with foods and beds that had probably been acquired less than legally. Mona didn't care.

She sat Mona down and gave her tea, made with herbs that had strange-sounding names and had apparently been inherited from a rat. Mona told her about the boy in the hallway, and Alopex said there was nothing wrong with letting the rage take you sometimes, as long as you inflicted it on deserving people. "You're not a monster," she promised Mona. Mona looked at her folded hands and tried to believe her.

She sat and watched Alopex make her way around the shelter, handed out food and comfort. "Were you one of the originals?" she found herself asking as Alopex sat by her again.

The fox cocked her head. "What?"

Mona blushed. "Sorry, I just...that's the name I use when I think of people were mutated before the bomb." She jerks her head at Alopex. "You don't move like the others...like me. You're more graceful, more comfortable, like you've had years to get used to...this instead of a few months."

Alopex blinked at her. "You know, you're right. Most people don't notice that." She turned away, heading off to the kitchens, and Mona followed her.

"What?" she said. "You need all the help you can get, and if I'm not a monster I might as well start proving it."

So Mona moved in with Alopex. They weren't lovers: Alopex was cute, but that was it, and she apparently had some thing with a crazy vigilante turtle who'd been running around the neighborhood. They became good friends, though. Mona told her about school, and Alopex told her a little bit about her life before Mutant Town, about the crazy world of honest-to-god _ninja_ that had shaped her.

"I can't believe we never noticed this," Mona admitted once. "Ninja are sneaky, yeah, but still...it's so _much."_

"Most people didn't really want to know," Alopex said, not unkindly.

She offered to give Mona a few lessons on moving quietly and defending herself. Mona picked up the fighting rather slowly, which Alopex said was natural, but she was great at the sneaking, and she got better at manipulating her tail at every lesson.

Mona called her parents, sitting in the small room that she usually shared with one other kid moving in and out of Alopex's place. She told them everything was fine, that she'd moved in with a good friend and was trying to help people. She didn't tell them about the boy.

And she didn't tell them the night she slipped out of the shelter after Alopex had given her the night off, because running the place got depressingly easier when you had less food to cook, and made her way to a Mutanimals' warehouse. She was no ninja, but she was certainly quieter than the guards, and ducked past their poker game with her heart in her mouth.

She stuffed a bag full of food and crept back out into the night, resisting the urge to blow her cover with a victory dance. She made her way back home, smirking at the idea of the chaos she'd leave in her wake. An ambush was waiting for her, but also a yellow-banded turtle who would save her life, and a bunch of hungry mouths to feed.

Mona had wasted enough time dealing with rates of reaction. Now she was ready to start some of her own.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Like Mona Lisa, her brothers are named after famous art (or what I found when I looked up "Famous works of art" on Google).  
> Adam is the "The Creation of Adam," Napoleon is "Napoleon Crossing the Alps," David is Michelangelo's "David," Vincent is Vincent Van Gogh's self-portrait, Washington is "Washington Crossing the Delaware," and Campbell is "Campbell's Soup Cans."


	12. Leaving

They've all thought about doing it: leaving. Shuffling off this mortal coil, ending yourself, kicking the bucket, taking the plunge, going to the great pizza place in the sky...there are so _many_ euphemisms for it, aren't there?

When Leo stays behind in the Technodrome, he's not thinking about killing himself, not exactly. He's thinking about sacrificing himself for his brothers, of doing the heroic thing, and even if that's not so much better at least he's not actually trying to die.

A small part of him might be wondering what it would be like to not have to worry anymore, to not have to fight and scheme and struggle in the endless battle to keep his brothers alive, but that's all it is: small. And the rest of him is determined to endure.

Later on, in the scout ship, the small part is louder and stronger. It's a dull whine in his head, built up over years of loss and suffering. He's seen a woman burn so his brothers could live. He's fallen for a girl who seems incapable of loving anyone, hard as she tries. He's been broken into a million small pieces, and the threads holding them together are far more fragile than his brothers suspect.

Still, when the opportunity to live comes, he takes it. Even if he regrets it later, at times.

Mikey's time comes much earlier, when he's trapped in Dimension X and he'd waited _so long_ for someone to come save him. He wraps his nunchucks around his throat and yanks, feeling the links dig into his skin. He pulls for one, two, three...before the panic shoots through him and he collapses, wheezing for breath, blood running from his neck. He can't do it, and he sobs, unsure if it's from relief or shame at his own cowardice.

The bruises have faded by the time his brothers find him. The urge comes back, sometimes, like the day he saw the world burn along with his father and best friends. Or the period right after the aliens broke into his mind, because _he could feel them inside his head_ and it _hurt,_ even though he knew they were gone _because he'd killed them._

He hasn't tried to act on them again, though, so far. So far.

When Leo's in a coma, Donnie thinks about ending things. He blames himself for what happened already, and the guilt gets worse every day he can't wake his brother up. Then there's the ever-building likelihood that the government'll just destroy New York to stop the aliens in their tracks, the grief for a father who's probably dead, and the endless bone-crushing _terror_ of being leader _how did Leo handle this so long?_

Being Donnie, he doesn't need to think about things for long before he does them. While everyone is asleep, he goes into the bathroom and slits his wrists. There's a few seconds of relief, followed by a burst of crushing terror, and then he's frantically binding his wrists with the same skill he used to slice them.

He survives, somehow. The scars remain, hidden under his wrappings. But every time he makes a mistake, fails to keep his family safe, every time one of his precious inventions does more harm than good, he'll find himself picking at them. He's always careful to avoid infections.

Raph takes up drinking while his brother's in a coma, desperate for _something_ to keep him sane during the long, wretched hours of waiting. The first time he drinks too much is after the Creep, when he's frantically trying to burn the memory of strangling green leaves out of his brain. Donnie thanks God that he had decided to wait until tomorrow to dismantle the homemade stomach pump he'd already put together to get leaves out of Raph's stomach.

He and Leo take turns screaming at Raph, make sure to pour all his booze down the drain, and make it clear to Casey that his life will not be very long if he gives any alcohol to Raph ever again. Donnie does not dismantle the pump.

The second time comes after the brain worm, despite Leo's efforts to keep an eye on him. Mikey finds Raph in a puddle of his own vomit and Donnie shackles him to the bed for three days, making up bullshit medical excuses before Splinter finally forces him to let his brother go.

"I'm not trying ta kill myself!" Raph protests, and he means it, sort of. He just wants the pain to stop, and he's not always careful about how he goes about it.

After the world ends, Donnie makes sure to monitor every drink in the ship's kitchen, and makes Fugitoid get rid of everything with even the slightest possibility of intoxication. Leo finds Raph cutting himself with his sai, and even if he swears he's not trying to kill himself Leo confiscates his weapons anyway. Fugitoid makes sure to program the new weapons so that they deactivate should they touch the wielder's flesh.

The brothers sleep together the first few weeks after Splinter's death. Someone usually has an eye on Raph--even Mikey and April take turns, and Casey does a surprisingly good job of listening to Leo's instructions.

They avoid disaster then, but not after the vampire. Raph is forbidden to go out alone for two weeks after Donnie pumps him once again. He loses his shit quite frequently during the period, but his brothers are always ready to pin him down and pull him into a hug, holding him tight like the precious, broken thing he is.

After his mother dies, Casey takes some of her remaining pills and fits them into his mouth, just to see what it tasted like. He stands on his tiptoes and looks at himself in the mirror; he's heard that you sometimes see people's reflections caught in the mirror, and wants to see his mom's. He wants to ask her if she's okay with him following her.

After a while, he decides she's not, 'cause then why would she leave in the first place? He spits the pills into the trash and goes to go blow something up.

Casey spends a lot of time in his room at the farmhouse, staring at one of April's dad's razors and thinking of the family he'd failed to protect. He presses it to his wrist, just the point, and watched the blood run down his skin. He has to do it a few more times, leaving little pinpricks all over his flesh, before he decides he's not ready to go that way.

He adds more pinpricks after the world ended, covering his arms with constellations that are inversions of the stars around him. The pain grounds him, somehow, keeps him from crumbling in the vast cruel emptiness.

He wears long sleeves all the time, so Raph's the only who finds out, after a thug tears Casey's shirt during a fight. He threatens to chuck Casey off a building if he pulls something like that ever again, and then they break down sobbing in each other's arms. Raph checks his wrists for months afterwards, scanning for the slightest new mark.

The day after she finds out what she really is, April thinks about dying. She stands on a rooftop and lets the wind run through her hair. If she falls, it will be the body of a Kraang that smashes on the concrete, after all. The people who have tried so hard to destroy her will be deprived of another weapon, and shouldn't she want that?

Donnie comes and stops her, before she can fall her. He holds her close and tells her that she's still herself, still their friend, that nothing was really changed. The Kraang have inadvertently given her a gift, he reminds her, and she'll use to destroy them.

He's not there a few days after Za-Naron, when April takes a bunch of her father's sleeping pills and lies on the bed. She leaves a note explaining everything, telling her father and friends that they're safer without her.

She wakes up on her knees in front of the toilet, Karai's strong hands holding her up and keeping her hair back while Shini shoves a finger down her throat. "Leo told us to check up on you," Karai explains afterwards. They don't leave her alone for days.

Later, after Splinter is killed before April's eyes, her powers useless to save him, Shini's there to hold her close and tell her that everything's going to be okay. She drags April to Karai's hospital room and they huddle there together, clinging on to one another for dear life.

Karai knows a thing or two about wanting to leave. She first thinks about using her sword on herself when she figures out that her whole life was a lie, but decides to focus on achieving some form of redemption first.

After her mutation, she wanders into fight after fight with cops and criminals alike; she refuses to roll over for such people, but she feels disappointed by every fight she manages to survive regardless. She's getting better, she thinks, before the brain worm.

When she wakes up with a throbbing headache and a heart crumbling under the weight of guilty memories, she knows what to do. She climbs to the top of a skyscraper--only the most impressive suicide for a daughter of ninja--and tips herself over the edge. She changes her mind a few seconds afterwards, as happens with jumpers, and summons a snake tail to grab a ledge and catch her in midair, sending her bouncing like a bungee cord.

When both of her fathers die she thinks about dying again, because what else is there to do when a girl whose entire life was about revenge has been given just that? Leo senses this when he brings her Shredder's, and also senses that if he goes home alone he also might not survive until morning.

He stays up with her for hours, telling her about every detail of the battle and the adventures he's had without her, wringing her for information about her own experiences. They make it through together: the girl, the turtle, and the corpse of a monster. In the morning he helps her to the rooftop, and they watch the sun rise together.

Shini is far older than she appears, and she knows a thing or two about sorrow. A few centuries ago, her mother was burned at the stake and she tried to leap into the flames to join her, only to be held back by an older sister while their grandmother wreaked havoc among the townspeople.

Later on, her first, greatest love abandoned her to marry a man, and she tried to take a bit of poison. It was a foolish act, and luckily Shini realized it in time, but the experience left her with a nose for the broken and the damaged.

"People say it gets better, which is a stupid cliche, but cliches start because they're based on real life," she tells April once. "It doesn't _always_ get better, but a lot of the time it does. Like, 95% of the time. You and your buddies are special, O'Neil, but you're still part of the 95%."

As a teenage, Hamato Saki huddles in his room after a scolding from his father or a humiliation during training, pressing a stolen lighter to the soft inner skin of his wrist. When that's not enough, he takes a handful of sleeping pills. His brother finds him still on the bathroom floor and calls 911, an action that a small broken part of him will regret, later on.

Saki wakes up in a hospital room to find his father yelling at him, feeling the heat of his fury without processing the tears in his eyes. He smiles at the sight of Tang Shen at his bedside, barely noticing Yoshi on the other side.

Oroku Saki has no time for tears or weakness. He sees no need to destroy himself, not when there are so many others to destroy instead.

There are marks from razor blades under Hamato Yoshi's fur, from when one of the maids at the hotel he stayed in as his house burned found him curled up in the bed in a pool of blood. He doesn't tell his children about that, but he does sit by Raphael's bedside after the brain and tells him about his own experiences with stomach pumps.

He doesn't tell Raphael about the early, ugly days following his transformation, which he looked down at the monstrous children huddled at his feet and wondered if they would be better off gone, along with him. He'd even held the sword in his hand before the shame had washed over him, followed by a bolt of determination to _keep them alive._

But the shadows haunt him still, and they grow even worse after his encounters with the Rat King. _Useless,_ he thinks to himself, every time his children come covered in blood and bruises. _Hopeless,_ he thinks, trying to hold them up as they drown in ugly thoughts. _Doomed,_ he thinks, watching Miwa fall, and again after his every interaction with her leads to more heartbreak.

There is a moment when he sees Saki's claws coming towards him and his hands go still at his sides. There is something oddly familiar about this moment, as if he has lived it far too many times before. As if he's trapped here, watching claws glitter in the moonlight, unable to leave.

If he manages to block or dodge, manages to win the fight, what will happen? He'll have no more vendettas to keep him going, no furious fire lighting up his breast. He'll have children to take care of, he supposes, but these children have spent so much time without him already. Sometimes, he's not sure if they need him anymore, now that he's given them so many of his secrets already. Leo guides them and Donnie heals them and Raph protects them and Mikey makes them smile, and what does Splinter do?

It's only a second before he remembers April and Raphael watching him, before he remembers all the ways his children need him. Then the claws are ripping through his chest and he's falling into the dark, chased down by fear and pain, grief and guilt, and the tiniest bit of wicked relief.

Seconds are precious things, and we're not always allowed to waste them, even when we need to.


	13. Mantra

The first time he throws up blood, after he saves his brothers from Karai, Leo is terrified. He flushes the pink-tainted pizza down the drain and runs to his father, who just looks at him with an expression of sorrowful acceptance. "I'm sorry," he whispers, hugging Leo close. "I am so sorry, my son."

That's when Leo learns what his father couldn't quite tell him before; that the mantra has a price. His father has worn himself down over the years, soothing infections and holding down fevers. Now it's Leo's turn to carry the burden, to see how much his young, strong, inhuman body has to give.

Leo isn't bitter. Why would he be? He's been sacrificing himself for his brothers for as long as he can remember. When they were small, he always made sure they got the lion's share of the food, he stayed up to watch over them when they had nightmares, he pushed himself to the limit training so he could keep them safe. The Technodrome, and the day of the invasion were steps in a familiar dance, really.

"I am so proud of you," Splinter murmurs, stroking his head, gentle in a way he so rarely is. "You must promise me, Leonardo, to never use this mantra unless you absolutely need it."

He makes the promise, and he means it. Only, only....only there are so many times when he needs it, as it turns out.

Raph, limp and still on the floor of his cell. Donnie, muscles twitching and eyes rolling from the shocks. After they set Karai free, Leo finds her dripping cold on the bank of the Hudson and chants the mantra as he does his best CPR. She flees before he can bring himself to ask if she did it on purpose.

Splinter gives him teas for the headaches, but he can't do anything for the nightmares of what could have been, of corpses and funerals. Nerve attacks hurt worse than they used to, but Leo's afraid to tell his father to stop because what if his brothers want to know why he's getting special treatment?

In space, something goes wrong with April's helmet and she's barely breathing when Leo drags her back from the edge. Casey is exposed to something on a distant planet and he very nearly dies in Leo's arms while Fugitoid looks for the cure. Mikey overdoses on something he got in a market after the aliens rape his mind, and Leo makes his little brother sleep with him for the rest of the journey, just in case.

The periods of bloody nausea stretch, oh so slowly. His muscles throb and spasm at night, and his bad leg feels worse every time he tries to fix it on the sly. Some days he has a painful ringing in his chest, or wakes up gasping from a dream about an almost-death he didn't experience. He loses time.

Raph gets shot by a man after saving him from a mugging. "You don't owe them anything," Leo reminds him afterwards, and Raph gets angry, says that the city is their home and they need to protect it. "Haven't we done enough?" Leo asks, but deep down he knows that Raph is far too like him, that it is not enough for either of them.

Leo will find himself staring into space during conversations, and not remember what he was thinking about, although he learns to lie quickly. He will do anything to keep this from them.

April is stabbed, Donnie is shot, that fucking rhino tosses Raph through a window--not life-threatening, maybe, but he can't bear to watch them suffer. He sets broken bones rather than see his brothers with their clenched faces, trying to be brave. Splinter dies despite Leo's best efforts, and a thousand times in his dreams.

 _Gibberish_ , Donnie calls it, and Leo tells him he's ridiculous while totally agreeing, deep down. The mantra _is_ gibberish; the power comes from his desperate need to keep his brothers alive. All the syllables provide is focus, and focus is so precious for ninja.

Karai is attacked by a claimant to the throne, and Leo kneels over her while Shini skins the one responsible alive in the background (she gets a set of new gloves afterwards and Leo's afraid to ask).

Sometimes, he looks down at his hands and they're the wrong shade of green, or even white. He has flashes of conversations he's never had, he opens his eyes and he's in the wrong bedroom. He starts losing memories, small ones: a phone call, a point made at dinner, a joke from sparring.

His soul is mixed with those of his friends and family, while he's giving up bits of himself for them. The tradeoff is worth it, he knows it is.

Mikey eats a bad piece of pizza (poisoned? just bad luck?) and shakes in his arms. Leo's covered with vomit and shit by the time it's over, but he doesn't care. The freezer blows out and Leo's hands glow blue, forcing a melting Ice Cream Kitty back into shape while Donnie babbles frantically over a heap of parts and the others yell over the phone for their friends to _bring that fucking ice now._

He holds down his nausea, checks his teeth for discoloration, dashes to a safe place when he feels himself about to pass out, hides bloody tissues under the floorboards, prays no one asks why bruises take so long to heal on him. His brothers just think that using his life-force for the mantra makes him more tired, and that's all they will every think.

He knows that they would beg him to stop if they understands how bad it was, and he knows he wouldn't be able to listen.

Donnie is injured in an explosion in his lab after falling asleep while working, and Leo is the only one who knows how bad it was. After that, Mikey sets a timer to barge into the lab whenever they think he's gone long enough without sleep. Leo has dreams about not arriving in time anyway.

The symptoms are lasting longer, now. Aches, pains, and bouts of shaking or nausea that used to fade within minutes or hours can last for days. He barricades himself in the dojo, tries to limit their excursions, cuts himself off from his family just so they won't see him so weak, won't figure it out. He'll take their complaints and hurt feelings as long as they're still alive to make them.

"They were just normal people, not ninja," Mikey murmurs, deep in the sedative, while Leo tries to focus on his little brother's shattered fingers. "I wasn't trying to hurt them and....one of them snuck up on me." Afterwards, Leo tries not to fall over as he shouts Raph down from going out and seeking revenge, praying he's made the right decision.

Donnie doesn't have to worry about playing doctor anymore, now that Leo's tending their hurts. He can work on the projects that really interest him, which is especially good since he doesn't get an opportunity to notice that Leo's losing weight.

"I was powerless most of my life, even though I didn't admit it to myself, so now leadership is something precious for me," Karai tells him once, sipping her wine thoughtfully as they watch the moon rise. "It's different for you. You were trained to see responsibility as a burden."

"It is a burden," he admits. "But it's one I'm happy to bear." And he is. Most of the time, he really is. He has the quiet arrogance of the martyr, proud to pour his life into the bodies of the people he loves (an ugly voice whispers _they'll wish they were nicer when I'm gone_ and he pushes it away).

A few months after Splinter's death, Raph washes pills down with beer before changing his mind and staggering into Leo's room in a panic. Afterwards Leo curls up on a ball, hurting too badly to move, while Donnie shouts himself hoarse at their brother.

They put Raph on a kind of homemade suicide watch, which at least gives Leo an excuse to cut down on sleeping, training and meditating, since these things are getting harder than they should be.

Sometimes, he closes his eyes and becomes Raph, tossing back the bottle with a feeling of total exhaustion. He pretends he has no idea why Raph feels that way, why Leo might feel that way.

His hands shake, sometimes. The world spins under his feet if he's not careful. His teeth are feeling rougher, and his mouth tastes of blood almost all the time now. He gets hungry and sleepy far too quickly. His head is full of shadows, ugly thoughts and memories that may or may not be his own. The minutes he loses stretch to hours.

"It doesn't hurt, does it?" April asks as Leo sets her broken arm. He smiles, the reassuring big-brother smile he occasionally finds himself practicing in the mirror. "Of course not."

Leo sits in his room, head throbbing, dabbing at the blood coming from his mouth and nose and ear slits, on tenterhooks in case someone barges in on him, and knows that it's all worth it.

They figure it out eventually, of course.

Casey finds Leo unconscious on the bathroom floor in a little pool of blood, fingers twitching uselessly, looking shrunken and thin now that he can no longer hold himself so carefully. From a distance, Leo hears people shouting and feels himself being carried through the air. _I fucked up,_ he thinks, and then he's too tried to think anymore.

While he sleeps Donnie runs test after test, scanning for poisons, infections, anything that might have reduced their brother to a ruin. He finds nothing. When he shines a light down Leo's throat he notices that his teeth have the kind of damage suspecting weeks or months or vomiting, and that one of the back ones has come loose.

"He fixed my ribs," Mikey whispers, staring at their brother with clenched fists. "He used the mantra right before....before...."

"It's not that," Raph says, desperately. "He would have _stopped_ if it was screwing him up. He can't...he can't not have noticed, if it was bad for him."

Mikey doesn't respond, doesn't need to, because they all understand that this is _Leo._ Leo, who whether by accident or design (they pray it wasn't Splinter's design; they'll never be sure), has become the kind of person who will sacrifice himself again and again, who will pour everything he has into his brothers until he has absolutely nothing left.

Like the Giving Tree, Donnie supposes. Although they would never _ask_ him to destroy himself for them, which is one of the cruelest things.

When Leo stirs, blinking, he finds three worried green faces peering down at him, with the paler shapes of their friends flickering around the corners. Someone asks him a question, he's not sure who, not that it really matters.

"I love you," he rasps out. "I love you, and I don't want to see you hurt. It's...it's not as bad as it looks, really. I can take it."

He tries to sit up and immediately passes back out, which might undermine his point somewhat.

"Your brother is an idiot," Shini announces, taking a drag on her cigarette ("I'm an immortal demon witch, I don't get lung cancer.") "Your father is an idiot, for teaching that thing to him. And we are all idiots for not figuring it out sooner."

No one bothers to argue with her. They're all crammed in the kitchen, with Raph sitting between his brothers (he's technically still on suicide watch, but they really don't have time for that particular emotional clusterfuck right now). Shini perches on the counter, fresh from her magical examination of Leo.

"It's sucking up too much of his life force," she says. "Probably gets worse every time he uses it, meaning longer healing times, so he has less to give next time and...." She sighs. "The imbalance is screwing up everything; he'd probably be already dead if he were human. There are potions I can make to help, but they'll really only be effective if he never, ever uses the mantra again."

"We'll be more careful," Mikey says firmly. "We won't take risks, we'll watch over him and each other, we'll--"

"You'll still get hurt," Karai says quietly, looking at her clasped hands. "He won't be able to stop himself, and you won't be able to stop him, not unless you gag him for the rest of his life or something." He's like Shredder in that regard, she supposes. They both love--or loved--too hard, too much, and the penalties are too high. 

"Then what do we do?" Donnie asks, trying not to think about whether this counts as a drawn-out suicide attempt.

For a few moments, no one speaks. There's no Leo to make a plan; maybe Karai is expected to step into that role, but she doesn't know what to say. She can't thinking of the cold bite of water on her skin and the soft glow she mistook for Heaven at first, only to be disappointed.

Leo saved her life that night and a part of her hated him for it. If they somehow save him from himself, will he feel the same?

The pensive silence is broken when April straightens in the corner, a plan tripping into her brain before she can stop it. "Um," she says, squirming like the nervous girl she hasn't been for so long. "I have an idea."

They discuss April's suggestion, meaning that they argue and shout. They yell loud enough for Leo to stir slightly from his place on Donnie's cot, hooked up to IVs and blood bags that can't keep fresh red drool from soaking his pillow.

Nobody wants to do it, not even April. But they all know, deep down, that Leo will not listen if they try to just _talk_ to him about this. He didn't listen after the Technodrome after all, or the invasion, or any of the countless times he's bled for them. After all these years of disillusionment, he's still a little boy who believes in heroes, and a hero never hesitates to make the big sacrifice.

So April slips into the lab and sits by his bedside, dabbing at his mouth before resting gentle fingers on his head. She closes her eyes, breathes in, breathes out. Her eyes snap open, and they're lightning white.

She flicks through Leo's memories, trying her best to avoid stumbling on anything intimate or irrelevant. April focuses on one very specific thing, and soon dozens of memories containing it rush to the front of Leo's mind. She grits her teeth as she slowly, surely pops syllables like bubbles.

By the time she emerges she's exhausted, but nothing worse, thank God. She lets herself be harassed into taking a nap, because Leo is only the first of her "patients" and this not the kind of thing you want to do tired.

Everything hurts when Leo wakes up, so that hasn't changed, but something else has. He can feel it.

Mikey's sitting at his bedside and he expects his brother to scream, to yell, to tear Leo apart for playing with his life. Instead he just pulls him close, running a gentle hand up and down his shell.

"I...." Leo blinks, still half-asleep. "My head, something's....something's wrong."

"It'll wear off soon," Mikey murmurs gently, squeezing Leo's still-twitching fingers.

"What will? Mikey...." But his brother's pouring something sweet into his mouth, muttering about a gift from Shini and how she apparently "improves" her potions with apple juice. Leo's lowered back to the pillows, drifting back into the darkness.

He goes through this ritual several more times, with an array of brothers and friends, before he finally wakes up with his head a little clearer and Donnie snoring at his side. It doesn't hurt as much to sit up as it did last time, so Leo does, carefully adjusting his weight to keep the cot from creaking.

Of course, his immediate response is a tidal wave of guilt. He's just made the job of caring for his brothers' hurts a thousand times more difficult, and undoubtable freaked the hell out of everyone in the process. What if they start hiding their injuries from him after this? What if they lock him up while they go on patrol, what if they sedate him, what if what if what if....?

He glances over at Donnie, automatically scanning his younger brother for any wounds he could use the mantra on--

The mantra.

The _mantra._

Something's wrong there. Leo frowns, narrowing his eyes in concentration as he brings up the syllables that have becomes as familiar as his brothers' names.

_Rin...Pyo...Toh...._

And just like that, it stops. He can't remember anything else.

His breath catches, but he forces his heartbeat to smooth. Come on, Leo, you _know_ this.

_Rin...Pyo..._

And now the third syllable is gone, too.

He can remember every wound he's ever tended, he can remember every detail of every conversation he had with his father about the mantra, he can remember the tea he brews for his headaches, he remembers blood mixed with pizza, remembers the world twisting out from under him in the bathroom, he remembers....

_Rin...._

He claps a hand over his mouth to force a sob back down. Donnie mumbles, but doesn't wake up, which is good because if someone tried to engage Leo in conversation he might start screaming.

_..._

The first syllable slips like water through his fingers and he can't _breathe_ , one of his greatest defenses has been ripped away from him and he _doesn't know how_ , there's no one who could possibly break into his mind like this except....

Except.

And that's how Leo learns he's not the only capable of desperate, ruthless love.

"Give it back."

April sits up from where she's resting in Donnie's bed. The sight of a turtle standing over her with a sword might be alarming, if Leo wasn't pale as death and swaying on his feet. There's no question of who would win in a fight, and they both know it.

"I can't," she replies, rising to meet him. "I took my own memories away after I did you and everybody else."

 _"Liar,"_ he spits. His eyes are wild with terror and violation, and the sight pierces her to the core. But excruciating guilt has become a good friend over the years, so she meets his gaze steadily.

"You weren't going to stop," she says quietly. "Even if we begged you, and we would have _begged_ , Leo. You didn't stop after the Technodrome and you didn't stop after the invasion, or the scout ship, and the only reason you've ever _not_ sacrificed yourself over something is that we got rid of it first."

"Father gave it to me," he whispers hoarsely. "I needed it to _protect_ them. You don't know everything that's _happened,_ they could have _died_ so many times without that mantra. _You'd_ have died without it."

"And you'd have died because of it," she shoots back. "Maybe you're willing to make that trade, but _we're_ not."

He shakes his head wildly. "You were in my head," he whispers. "You broke into my mind, you..."

"I know, and I'm sorry. But I wouldn't undo it if I could."

He stares at her for a second before tossing the sword aside with a groan and dropping onto the bed, head in his hands. "And if somebody dies next time?" he asks quietly.

She sits down besides him, pulling him close. "Then they'll die knowing that their brother, their _friend,_ didn't turn himself into a sacrificial lamb for them."

"I could have taken it," he says, not sounding very convinced.

"For a while. Then you'd be dead, and we'd spend the rest of our lives feeling as if every breath was stolen."

"This isn't...." He lets out a soft groan. "This isn't how it works. I'm the one who makes the sacrifices."

"Not anymore," she tells him. "This time we do it together, the way we should have since the beginning."

She tips his chin so that their eyes lock. "We _love_ you, Leo. We love you and we think you deserve to live, so we're going to save you, like you saved Raph and Karai. And you'll just have to live with that."

He stares at her for a few seconds before letting out a soft sob. April holds him as he cries, stroking his shell and not bothering to murmur pleasant nonsense because she doubts he really wants to hear anything else he has to say.

She holds him as he cries, shedding tears instead of blood and vomit. Tomorrow begins the long, grinding process of recovery for him, and by extension all of them, but for now, she thinks, this is enough.


	14. Nomads

Mondo Gecko and Seymour Guts make their way across the country in a stolen RV, fueled with stolen gas, loaded up with stolen objects and blasting stolen CDs from the front seat. It's covered in stolen paint, depicting an odd mishmash of birds, butterflies, and flowers (Seymour) mixed with lightning bolts, skulls, and various punk slogans (Mondo).

They live off of food stolen from gas stations and delis, eating in cornfields and forests or sitting on rooftops as they watch the bees dance and the people go about their business. Mondo occasionally has "awkward" experiences with less-than-health-inspection-ready food, and curses a snickering Seymour for his far more durable digestive system.

Seymour wears a variety of hats (also stolen) to distort his shadow, and they pray that Mondo just looks like a guy in a weird costume to casual drivers. So far, it seems to work. They have pepper spray and Mondo's invisibility in case it doesn't.

(They also have the gun Hob tried to teach them both to use. Seymour is the better shot, but he lets Mondo keep it in his possession most of the time, unless it needs to be cleaned. He doesn't want to risk holding it should the shadows come back over him).

They trade off--Mondo pokes Seymour when he's driving too slow, and Seymour pokes Mondo when he's driving too fast. They do a rather terrible job of singing along to the music, not that it matters. "It's the _passion_ that counts, my dude," Mondo promises Seymour, tapping his flowery sunhat. "Let the straights worry about staying on key."

At night, they lie curled up together on that camp bed. It's the most they'll ever able be able to do, and in truth it's all they need. Mondo rests his head on Seymour's chest; they both pretend it's just for heat absorption and not because he's listening for something to go wrong in the night.

Seymour dreams about Null finding them again, about being taken apart for the millionth time and put back together in an even more monstrous shape. Worse are the nightmares of having to watch while _Mondo_ suffer, of seeing the light be carved out of his beautiful bright eyes.

He'll wake up screaming and Mondo will be there to hold him close, stroking his flickering dome. He sings punk songs like lullabies, and they really do calm Seymour down eventually, letting him sink back onto the pillow.

Mondo has nightmares, too, these days. He dreams of Agent Bishop chasing them down in a hail of bullets or of Slash falling from the sky. Seymour's not very used to comforting people, but he does his best, singing for his soulmate the way Mondo sings for him.

Occasionally, Mondo will have dreams of Hob finding them. "I'm not afraid of him," he whispers, burying his head in Seymour's chest. "I'm _not._ "

And he isn't, not really. He's not scared of _his_ Hob, the grumpy old father figure who tried his level best to figure things out and keep them safe. But he's frightened of the new Hob, the dead-eyed _terrorist_ willing to subject so many people to an agonizing transformation without considering the consequences.

"What the fuck is _wrong_ with you?" he'd screamed at Hob all those weeks ago. Seymour had stayed hunched over on the couch, gaping at the fire and destruction ripping across the TV. "I knew you were doing something big--I thought it was just gonna be a fireworks display or some shit, not _this!"_

"You were spying on us?" Hob demanded, and his eye remaining had had the audacity to flare up with outrage.

"Yeah, and I shoulda started a lot sooner!" Mondo waved at the TV. "Do you have any _idea_ what those people are going through? They're not like us, they didn't _need_ this. They had actual _lives_ that you just blew to fucking smithereens!"

"And what would you have us do?" Hob growled. "Stay in the shadows? Let Bishop and all those other assholes pick us off like cattle, convince everybody we're _monsters?"_

"Bishop's dead," Mondo reminded him.

"According to Raph _,_ who _bolted_ on us, and the rest of those incense-huffing lunatics," Hob said scornfully. "And even if he really _did_ kick the bucket, there will always be another Bishop. _Always."_

"So putting a couple million more people on the hit list, that helps things?" Mondo couldn't believe it and neither, judging by the shocked expression on his helmet, could Seymour.

"They can't ignore us anymore," Hob hissed through clenched teeth. "No mutant will ever be swept under the rug like _Slash_ was--"

"Slash wasn't forgotten," Mondo hissed. "He's remembered by the people who _loved_ him, the people who _mattered."_ He wanted to say _Slash wouldn't have wanted this,_ but he'd heard what Slash had said to Hob before Sally took him up. Slash had changed too, before he died, and the change scared Mondo just as badly as Hob's does now.

"We have an army now," Hob spat, eye glittering.

"No, we have a bunch of people who are probably going to _hate_ you for what you did to them," Mondo shoots back.

"They'll follow us. They _need_ to," Hob said firmly.

"You're insane," Mondo breathed. "Jesus fucking Christ, you're _insane."_

Hob's mouth dropped open, and that's when Sally had stepped in. "Both of you need to cool off."

"Cool off?" Mondo shrieked, whirling on her. "It's like the fucking Purge out there and you want us to _just cool off!"_

"Mondo, I knew Hob fucked up, but--"

"Fucked up? I didn't fuck up anything, I was trying to keep us _alive."_

"ALIVE!" Mondo was screaming now, but he didn't care. "People are _dying._ What about all the kids who got left alone after they mutated, huh? What about the people who turned to fucking _fishes?"_

"We'll take care of them," Sally promised.

"And then, what, they'll be so grateful they'll make Hob dictator?" Mondo's breath caught. "Jesus fucking Christ, that's exactly what you _planned_ , isn't it? You're fucking disgusting, you--"

"Okay, just calm down--"

"I've been fighting this war for _years,_ playing nice just doesn't _work--"_

"So we're switching to fascism now, is that rig--"

"You're practically a _child,_ you--"

"You're barely _older_ than me, _'Dad'._ Jesus, I can't believe I fell for _that_ bullshit--"

"SHUT UP! SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP!"

They all spun to see Seymour standing up in front of the couch, eyes wild, shining hands clasped to his dome. "Please, just _stop_ ," he whispered, and dashed for his room.

Mondo froze, glancing back at Sally and Hob, before dashing after him.

"Seymour?" he asked, slipping into the room. It was decorated with posters that Mondo and Lindsey had gotten for him, with a colorful blanket that they'd picked out from a furniture store. He and Mondo had held hands as they dashed through the shelves together, unable to hold back their giggles.

Seymour was curled up under it, his suit buzzing softly as he breathed. Mondo slipped in behind him, wrapped in his tail around Seymour's ankles and squeezing gently, the way he liked. "Buddy, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have--"

"I want to leave."

Mondo blinked. "What?"

"You were right," Seymour said, pressing his face into the pillow. "All those _people...._ he took them and pulled them apart, turned them into something they weren't supposed to be." His hand shook from where it was tangled in the sheets. "He....he's no better than _Null."_

He turned to face Mondo, so that their eyes locked. "You can come with, if you want, but I'm going. And I won't let you stop me."

Mondo stared. His family was here, his friends, everything he'd ever _known...._ but the turtles were gone, the city was tearing itself apart, but Hob and the others were quickly becoming strangers. Not to mention that life without Seymour was unthinkable.

"Of course," he whispered, running a soft hand down Seymour's face. "Always."

So they'd left. They'd collected the parts Lindsey had left behind, that she'd taught them both how to use. While the others plotted and schemed they'd filled boxes with clothes, posters, CDs, the wallets Mondo had collected when he'd first been honing his invisibility. Mondo used his phone to track down an RV dealership outside the so-called "Contaminated Zone."

Seymour wrote a note, telling their friends they were sorry, but they didn't have a choice. Mondo told Sally, Peter, and Herman that they were good people, better than Hob or Man Ray. He wished he could have said it to them in person, but he didn't know if they would be betrayed, didn't know how deep their loyalty ran or how far Hob would to keep his precious pack together.

He'd been loading up in the kitchen when he felt eyes burning into his skin. "What are you doing, Mondo?" Man Ray asked, leaning against the door.

"Uh....midnight snack?" He peered down at the bag stuffed with chips and water bottles. "Seymour was feelin' peckish..."

"It's not safe out there," Ray said, walking towards him. His eyes were full of real concern behind his glasses, but Mondo wasn't fooled. He'd seen firsthand what havoc Ray was capable of when he put his mind to it.

He straightened his back, forcing himself to meet Ray's gaze. "And it's safe in here?"

"Mondo, I know you're mad, but you can't--" Ray was reaching for him, and Mondo took a step back, feeling his tail bump into the island.

"Can't what?" he asked, trying to thrust the fear out of his throat. "People are _hurt_ because of him, Ray, they might be _dead_."

"Casualties are to be expected in war," Ray said.

Mondo scoffed. "You and Hob, you both _love_ your old-soldier cards. You spent your life in a fucking _cage,_ what do you know about war?"

"Enough to know that I'll never let another mutant be put in one again," Ray replied. His fingers closed around Mondo's arm. "Now I need you to calm down, and go back to bed before you make a mis--" There was a loud _thunk,_ and Ray's eyes rolled up in his head as he topped over.

Mondo darted forward and grabbed him, lowering him gently to the floor so he wouldn't make a noise. He glanced up at Seymour, who was standing there with the cookie jar clasped in his shaking hands. "The mistake's already been made," he said quietly, but his face was slack with terror.

"Dude," Mondo said, standing back up, "That was _awesome."_ Seymour blinked at him, and Mondo gently pulled the cookie jar from his hands before pulling into an embrace. "You're a badass, Seymour Gutz," he whispered. " _My_ badass." Seymour blinked, then relaxed into his embrace.

They took _the_ cookie jar with them when they left.

Their things were piled and carefully fasted in wagons as they slipped through the streets, Mondo in the lead. Seymour's suit could carry an impressive amount of wait, and he didn't mind having another big box strapped to his back as he walked.

In the shadows, under cloaks, they were no different from the haze of other evacuees. Mondo had taken some fireworks and tossed them near the EPF checkpoints, creating a distraction for them to slip past.

After some debate, they chose an RV and slipped inside. Seymour hung up the posters they'd taken back up while Mondo hot-wired the car. The EPF's forces were concentrated around the contaminated zone, and no one noticed them as they slipped out of the city, making their way down streets that were emptier than usual, what with everyone outside the zone gathered around their TVs.

They were some miles beyond the city limits when they both started to cry. But Mondo kept driving all the same, swiping tears from his eyes with his free hands. Neither of them suggesting going back; they had to keep running.

They're still running.

But wait, no, they refuse to call it _running._ They've covered a map in scribbles, marking down all the places they'd like to go. They've visited monuments and World's Biggest ___s, taking pictures with Mondo's phone or a "borrowed camera. They've broken into libraries and schools, stores and museums, creeping through the shadows after hours. 

They've scampered through dark amusement parks, whooping and snickering as Mondo tried to restart the machines. They've danced in the shadows of creaky old bars, catching the colorful light and music reflected through the windows. They scamper across parks, pushing each other on the swings and riding the seesaws and slides like the children they never got to be.

They've stolen books, of course. Mondo was overjoyed to stumble upon a volume of beat poetry, calling it the "grandpa of punk" and making Seymour read it aloud to him as they drive. For his part, Seymour likes hearing from a book of fairy tales, listening in awe to stories upon magic and wonder and finding beauty where it seems hidden. They both love comics, of course, and will curl reading them together after they've settle down for the night.

And then there's the music. The Ramones, Bad Religion, Talking Heads, Blondie, Sex Pistols, Siouxie and the Banshees, Joy Division, Sex Pistols, The Young Werewolves, 7 Shot Screamers, The Beat Farmers, Los Lobos, U.K. Subs, Depeche Mode, Talking Heads, My Chemical Romance, Suicidal Tendencies, Agent Orange, Alice In Chains....the list is endless.

Deep beats and piercing screams ring across the landscape, shaking the glass of their RV. Mondo's ears aren't the best, and neither are Seymours, so they usually have the music at levels that would make other drivers wince.

They hoard every new CD they can find like gold, and every once in a while Seymour convinces Mondo to try something _outside_ the punk range. So that's how they start playing K.Flay, Au/Ra, Grandson, Todrick Hall, LP, Lady Gaga, Ruelle, Zayde Wolf, Blue Eilish, Dua Lipa, Imagine Dragons, Fall Out Boy, Unlike Pluto....that list, too, is endless. As is the open road ahead of them.

Sometimes they call home, catching up with Lindsey and getting advice on Seymour's body. They'll call Mikey, too, if he's up to answer the phone. If they're in a mood to torture themselves they'll check back up on the state of Mutant Town.

"It was our fault," Mondo says when Seymour catches him staring at an ugly Youtube video of mutant chaos, a distant look on his face. "I knew Hob was keeping secrets again, I should have _known_ , I should have told Raph or Sally or the others...."

 _"No,"_ Seymour replies firmly, pulling the phone away. "Believing the best of someone isn't a weakness. You trusted Hob, and he threw that away, and now he's not our problem anymore. _Living_ is our problem."

He pulls Mondo close, breathing in his scent. "You didn't do anything wrong. Neither of us did. We were caught in the crossfire, and we got away." Mondo hugs back and tries to believe him.

Whenever they steal gas (after abusing some of the less complicated tech stolen from Bishop), Mondo always leaves careful, eye-catching murals somewhere on the station in question. He feels that if they have to steal gas, they can at least make up for it by helping with advertisement. He'll try to do it with stores, too, if he can get away with it, although they had to make some hasty exits.

"I like making places cooler!" Mondo presses, as Seymour roles his eyes and floors the gas petal. With the modifications Mondo's made on this thing, however, the cops haven't caught them yet.

Mondo has deleted most of his Mutanimal contacts except from Lindsey, and Sally, the woman who taught him to modify cars in the first place. Every time he talks to Mikey, he asks about her. He has faith that one day she'll get her head out of her ass and figure out that Hob's no good anymore. He can only hope it's not too late.

For now, he travels the open road with the man he loves. They have dark nights, but they also have bright days, and they get to experience both together.

"We ain't wanderers, and we ain't homeless," Mondo announces to Seymour, once. "We're _nomads._ Wherever we lay our heads counts as a home." Seymour doesn't know if that's the proper decision, but he doesn't really care because he knows Mondo's right anyway. 

Maybe one day they'll go back to New York. For now, though, they're just one of the many secrets on New York's back roads, and that's right where they belong.


	15. Offers

"No, no, no, no!" Wyrm shouts, eyes wild with terror. "Your your wish is m-my command! _No!"_

Casey sags with relief as the world ripples and twists around them. His inhuman veins buzz with the sense of time flowing backward and he glances down at his blue hands impatiently, waiting for them to turn pale again so he won't have to be aware of _everything--_

But when it does, the world comes to a stop. Suddenly he's standing in a blank void with none of his friends in sight. "Hello?" he asks, voice shaking slightly. "Hello?"

Nothing, except for the faint sound of...is that Fergie's "A Little Party Never Killed Nobody?" Casey shuffles his feet, passing a hand through his tangled hair.

"Hell-- _Jesus fucking Christ!"_ He almost falls over when Wyrm pops out of fucking _nowhere_ in front of him. "Wha--what the fuck _is_ this?"

"This?" Wyrm waves a casual hand. "This is the gap created when a timeline's in mid-collapse. Nice place, isn't it? Versatile, secluded, no annoying mutants running around messing things up--"

"Save it, shithead," Casey growls, grabbing for his stick, whiiiiich is not there. Fucking great.

"Casey," Wyrm says, clasping his hands and forcing his face into something that's probably supposed to be an ingratiating smile. "Casey, my man, my dude, my compadre, my bosom buddy, I am not sure you've thought this through."

"Well, _I'm_ sure," Casey shoots back, clenching his fists so Wyrm can't see them shake. "So why don't you stop bitching and bust a move? It's like I could take a wish back even if I wanted to."

"Oh, but you can," Wyrm cooes. "I can give a wish back if I _want,_ and if you're willing to _take_ it."

"Are you shitting me?" Casey snarls. "That wasn't in the rules!"

"More wishes means more rules!" Wyrm says, pumping his fists in the air. "Casey, darling, do you have any idea what I could offer you? For _free?_ No wishes, no games, none of that. You let me go right now and I will be _so_ grateful, I won't even touch your icky little planet for, hmmm, a couple thousand years. Isn't that a great deal?"

"Not interested," Casey says, glancing around as if there's anywhere he could go.

"But buddy, I've got a whole _sheet_ of offers right here!" Wyrm flings out his arms wide like a showman. "I've been flipping through the amazing internal world of Casey Jones, and I see _everything_ you want. And darling, you want _so much,_ don't you?"

And before Casey can even wrap his mind around the fact that _this fucker was in his_ head, a spotlight clicks on and _April's_ standing there, only she's wearing a black leather suit with a slightly lowered zipper a la Black Widow (as seen in some of Casey's most confusing fantasies) and a very seductive smile that doesn't mask the blankness in her eyes. "Hey, Casey," she croons, running a gentle hand up his chest.

He staggers backward. "Are you _shitting_ me?"

"Okay, not your type? That's cool." Wyrm snaps his fingers and now it's Donnie in April's place, in absolutely nothing except the long purple mask Casey sometimes dreams of winding around his fingers. He's biting his lip in that way that's just _so_ ridiculously sexy, and gently lifting Casey's chin with a slender finger, pulling him for a kiss...

"Stop it!" Casey yells, twisting out of fake-Donnie's grip as he winks out of existence. "They're not fucking _real,_ you think I'd give the universe up for that?"

"They would be real, though," Wyrm said. "That's the _point!_ I could _make_ them love you, make them want to enact your every fantasy and desire--"

" _Make_ them," Casey spits. "You mean, _forcing_ them. I wouldn't put _anyone_ through that, especially not my friends."

"So?" Wyrm says. "You do realize these are the people who spend most of the time convinced you're a traitor and/or a moron?"

Casey stiffens, because it _had_ hurt, the fact that his friends were so quick to believe he'd betray them. But... "They were just scared of what I was, what I'd become. They didn't understand me."

"That's right," Wyrm hums thoughtfully. "They were scared of their little pet human slipping his bonds, weren't they? Not so fun to smack Casey around when he's actually got powers of his _own."_

The world flickers red, and then Casey's stepping forward, thrusting into Wyrm's personal space. He may not be able to touch the crazy fucker, but he can still snarl, "You don't know _shit_ about them, and you sure don't give a fuck about me. Now stop with the fucking mind games, 'cause it's not going to work in a million years."

"Wouldn't it?" Wyrm asks, cocking his head. "I'm not sure you've really grasped the _scale_ of what I could offer you, Casey pal. But..." He nods, eyes sparkling. "Yes, that's right. A boy like you, with such a healthy sense of honor, you don't want things just for _yourself,_ do you? You want them for everyone."

Casey opens his mouth to ask what the fuck he's talking about, but then the void disappears and they're back in New York. A painful wave of homesickness burns through Casey, melting into terror as he notices the Triceratron ships hovering still and silent in the air overhead.

He can see people dotting the sidewalks, gazing upright with expressions of absolute terror, ignoring the cars smashing into each other nearby. A man in a police uniform raises a gun to his head, and Casey winces at the sight.

"Nasty," Wyrm chides, swinging his legs from where's perched on a hot dog stand. "Very, very nasty. Just imagine, Casey...." He snaps his fingers and massive red Xs cross over the hovering ships, blocking them out like incorrect answers.

"I can make it all go away with a thought. You could wake up at _home,_ with your dad burning pancakes downstairs and your sister playing her music too loud." Casey's knees start to buckle at the idea, but he grits his teeth and forces himself to meet Wyrm's gaze.

"Fuck you," he whispers. "Seriously, just _fuck you."_

"Not enough?" Wyrm asks. "How about I take away the nasty Kraang away, too? That'd be nice, huh, not having to fight off alien invasions with a hockey stick? Not constantly feeling out of your depth and praying no one notices?"

The scene changes and they're standing in a dark alleyway. Casey looks down to see a tangle of Purple Dragons sprawled at his feet, twitching and groaning. "Free to kick ass and take names, to be the _hero_ the city needs. To not always have to play second fiddle to a bunch of crazy _freaks--_ "

"They're not freaks," Casey spits, rounding on him.

"So protective." Wyrm shakes his head thoughtfully. "But didn't _you_ think of them as freaks, once?"

Casey bows his head, filling a bit of shame heat his cheeks. "I did," he admits. He'd been confused and scared, not to mention pissed off by Raph trying to beat him up and Donnie being so clearly in love with _his_ crush. "I was wrong."

He forces himself to meet Wyrm's gaze. "They're my friends," he says. "They've made mistakes, but so have I, and we're _better_ for it. And we've already _got_ a chance to fix all of this, to fix everything. We don't _need_ you."

"Maybe not now," Wyrm says, shrugging. "But in the future?" They're standing on the street now, rain powering down. Casey hears shouting and glances up to see April, wearing a black-and-yellow jumpsuit, her hair snapping like a banner in the wind as a crystal glitters around her throat. Donnie hovers in the air before her, writhing in an invisible grip as April peers down at him with a dull white gaze.

Casey's breath catches. 'What the fuck...."

"The future, if you continue on this merry path," Wyrm says, examining his nails. "If you let things stay _just as they are."_

"No." April closes her fist and Donnie fucking _disintegrates_ , wiped away like he's nothing. " _NO!"_

"Oh, yes," Wyrm says. "There are some things you just can't _have_ a timeline without. Like this!" And just like that April and Donnie are gone, replaced by Splinter falling from the sky. Casey hears shouts of pure terror and sees some of the turtles rushing past him, screaming his name. They don't reach him before he hits the ground with a sickening _crunch_ , and Casey claps his hand over his mouth.

"After that..." Wyrm shrugs. "Well, there are so _many_ variables to a timeline, and even amazing superbeings like me can only be certain to a finite extent. But it's _fun_ to guess, isn't it?"

He waves his hand and the scene starts changing, possibilities flipping by like television channels as Casey sees....

Leo and Karai standing before a burning building, blood dripping from their swords as a girl in a witch's hat cackles and takes photos.

A hulking, grim version of Raph picking through a _Fury Road-_ esque landscape with a robot chattering and babbling at his side.

Donnie watching Tiger Claw strapped to a chair, screaming and writhing as a glowing mist fills the mask stapled to his face.

A teenage girl with his hair and April's eyes fighting with Raph, screaming horrible things at him.

The Shredder running an older version of him, _Casey_ , through, watching him writhe with eyes that are too big and too green, no, _no--_

"STOP IT!" Casey screams, lunging at Wyrm and not caring that he can't touch him. "Fucking stop it, it's not, it's not..." But wait, he knows what it is, and the discovery makes him cackle with joy. "It's not _real!"_

Of course, it's not real, it's an illusion, just like the Xs over the Triceratrons. It's just a dream, a joke, a desperate ploy because his friends would _never_ hurt people like that and _Fury Road_ is just a movie and no child of his would fight Raph and Raph would _never_ and it's--

"All bullshit!" he spits, and holds onto that as the world crumbles around him. "Now. Let. Me. Go."

"Okay, okay," Wyrm says, raising his hands in the air. "I can see you don't believe me, I get it. But..."

And the scene changes one more time, to a place that makes Casey's heart twist in his stomach.

"What about something you _know_ happened, that your charming robot friend didn't even _offer_ to fix?"

They're in a bedroom, his parents' bedroom, the one they left behind for good when they moved to a smaller apartment. Casey knows this place like the back of his hand, though. He sees the rug that he peed on once and the two shiny shoes from him and his sister on the dress and the box with the glittering necklace his mom only wears once in a while and the black leather shoes he used to wear while pretending to be his dad.

And he sees his mom hunched over a piece of paper, hands shaking, sobbing softly as she scribbles away. He sees the way her hair sticks out in every direction and the circles over her eyes and the blood from where she's bitten through her lip again.

He sees this even though he didn't see it before, because he was young and stupid and staying over at the house of a friend who'd he kick the shit out of for no reason a few weeks later. (His sister was at summer camp, his father was at work, there was no one to hear the gunshot or call 911 until far too late).

There's a gun on the table, the gun his dad got because they were all scared of burglars. The gun that was carefully locked away from Casey and his sister, but both his parents knew the code.

 _Women don't want to leave a mess,_ someone said on TV, once, and Casey wanted to shatter the screen because of _course_ some women want to leave a mess. They want to make sure that everybody who didn't pay attention before can get a pretty decent eyeful of it now. The bloodstains on the floor, that's a better note than any teary, useless scribble.

 _The rats ate her body,_ Casey heard someone whisper about his mom, once. And even though he knows it's bullshit, he _knows,_ he couldn't keep the fear from settling in.

"Stop," he whispers. "Stop it, _now._ "

"Of course!" Wyrm cooes from where he's perched on the bed, _desecrating_ it. "I can stop it, I can stop _everything._ I can turn the gun into a lily, I can smooth out all the ugly little wrinkles in her brain brain, I can give you the mother you and Gabrielle _deserve."_

His mother finishes the note and shoves it away with a sigh. Casey doesn't know what it says, doesn't know whether she apologized for all the times she screamed and wept, all the fights with his father or her therapist. His dad wouldn't let them see it afterwards, and Casey never got up the courage to look for it.

"All you have to do is say the word," Wyrm whispers. "Let me go, let me _free_ , and I won't come bother your world until _you're_ long gone. Just think! You'll finish the hero's quest, you'll come home, and she'll be waiting for you with open arms and a smile, a _real_ smile."

It's tempting, oh so tempting, and he can't _breathe_ he's wanting so hard. Casey sways on his feet, watching his mother pick up the gun, watching her fiddle with it. "Stop," he whispers, then forces himself to raise his voice. "Mom, _stop."_

"She can't hear you," Wyrm says, running a finger along the gun barrel. "Not unless I let her. And I _will_ let her, if only you take back your wish. 

_Take back your wish._ God, he wants it so bad. Take it back, and he'll never wake up sweaty from nightmares of rats tearing his mother apart ever again. He won't have to watch Gabby, the turtles, his dad, April, _everyone_ for signs of them toppling over the edge (or feel the urge himself, sometimes). He'll never have the deal with the burning screaming rage that he _has_ to take out on criminals, because the only other option is to take it out on innocent people.

His mother is raising the gun. "Tick tock, Casey boy," Wyrm croons. "You wanna make a choice, you wanna be a _good_ son for once, you gotta do it now."

From a distance, he can feel his mouth drifting open. Take it back and he'll be _normal,_ he'll be _happy,_ he'll be...

Living with a woman who might either do it again or be a lifeless doll thanks to Wyrm's "help." Forced to have the blood of entire _civilizations_ on his hands. Turned into the exact kind of traitor his friend thought he was.

He reaches for his mom, his hands brushing along her cheek. In a final twist of cruelty, he's allowed to feel how _warm_ she is, how soft to the touch.

"Fuck you," he whispers. To Wyrm, to himself, to his mom for leaving....he doesn't know. But he says it, and he will never ever take it back.

She pulls the trigger and her face explodes into red, splashing hot and painful across his face. His mom slumps to the table with a soft thump, gun clattering out of her friend.

"You..." Casey glances over his shoulder at Wyrm, whose genial mask has been yanked away to reveal shock and raging fury. "You conniving little shit, I can't _believe_ you'd sacrifice your _own--"_

Casey grabs the gun from his mother's grip, because now that the deed is done there's nothing to keep him from doing anything, and fires at Wyrm's head. The room explodes into white and yellow light, the last burst of a doomed timeline, before collapsing to black.

Left alone in the dark, feeling himself fading fast, Casey Jones collapses to his knees and cries.

He's standing in the wreckage of the ship, a faint tear tracking down his cheek. What? He brushes it away, and forgets about it before his hand is lowered back to his side.

"So eerie," April comments. "It's like a horror movie waiting to happen." And Casey doesn't comment on his strange sense that the horrible things have already happened, and there's no wishing them away.


	16. Puppets

The blade from your staff triggers and a man dies, choking on his own blood. It's not an efficient as a kill as you would have liked; you would have preferred the sniper rifle, but Master wanted to make a statement. And what Master wants, he gets.

You head home with a sackful of heads, the three of you. You're all wearing identical costumes of black and red, you all have the same focused look in your eye, you all answer to the name Kame or Assassin or whatever the master calls you at the moment. Technically you're different people, but you think and act as an coherent unit. It's better that way, you think. Safer.

So you get home and the master is happy. No one screwed up, no one let a mark get away or started muttering to themselves again or fished some more of that tasty, forbidden breadline stuff out of the trash. There will be no whippings or poisonings, no beatings or extra training tonight. No one is being punished

When one or two or all three of you are called upstairs, to the masters' bedroom, it is not a punishment, at least not then. You repeat this to yourself afterwards, as the hot water stings on your bruises and a bit of blood dries between your legs. If the bleeding is bad enough, you are allowed to indulge in a touch of healing mutagen, but usually you just have to power through.

Master likes to use the names of human women, his eyes glazing over as he pretends he doesn't want to do this with beasts like you. Mistress' eyes are bright and ravenous, totally aware, manipulating you all like puppets. Sometimes you are allowed to feel pleasure, sometimes you are given, but no one ever asks if you want to be there at all (you are weapons, weapons have no likes or dislikes).

There are plenty of kinder nights where none of you are called upstairs, and you get to curl up in your little room together. Still, your hands shake and you feel nauseous as you peer into each other's empty eyes. 

The first time you were brought to the bedroom, you found yourselves silently crying, not knowing why and unable to stop it. Mistress had to take you by the chin and give you a firm lecture, the kind that's so firm you can't really remember the specifics. You stopped crying after that.

("I learn from my mistakes," she reassured Master afterward. "They're little more than dolls." You didn't focus too much on that, couldn't, because it was forbidden).

This is not the only time you've cried. You've cried when two of you are expected to beat another, although, curiously you never cry when it's your turn to be beaten. You cry when you're expected to service, as much as you safely can, the rhinoceros and the warthog (they always want you-with-the-bo-staff, which is maybe why you first found yourself merging with the others in the first place). You cry when you kill, sometimes, although it's less often these days.

Whenever you cry, your tears are soundless. You do not make noise unless the Master requests it, and the Master rarely cares to hear your voice.

So you do not protest when Mistress Kitsune gives you your nightly dose of sleeping medicine. It casts a heavy fog over your thoughts, smothers your dreams to a few flickers in the dark.

(Sometimes you hear people screaming for you: a boy, a woman, a man, their voices muffled by the shadows. You're not allowed to focus on that, because it is forbidden)

When you're not killing or sleeping or in the bedroom, you're training with each other and the other Foot. Karai's eyes are full of undisguised contempt, Koya looks like she would eat you for lunch at a moment's notices, and Bludgeon swings on a strange track between indifference and what seems to be pity.

It doesn't matter, not really. Master's and Mistress' are the only expressions you care about. If they told the three of you to train until for a solid twenty-four hours, you would. You know this because you did just that once, even though by the end you were staggering and crashing into each other like broken machines.

You passed out when the order to stop was given and woke up in the bedroom, the three of you were piled on the bed while Master and Mistress sat next to you. You were ordered to pleasure each other, to put on a show for the kind masters who let you rest so long. (You found yourself crying again, and had to smother your tears in each other's trembling bodies).

You have an enemy, a turtle like you. He wields double swords and has three pieces of cloth tied to his body: red around his head, orange and purple around his forearms. The colors look weird on him, weirder even than the green skin and the tears.

Because this turtle is always crying, even more than you at your worst. The tears glitter in his eyes as he fights, flashing like sparkles under the streetlamps.

He repeats a litany of strange words, like a prayer: _Raph, Donnie, Mikey. Raph, Donnie, Mikey. Raph, Donnie, Mikey._ It forms a kind of soothing cadence, and you wonder if he does it to relax his enemies during a fight.

Sometimes he tosses in other things, sentences like _I'm so sorry_ and _this is all my fault_ and _I love you_ and _Be strong, fight it, I promise I'll save you._ He tells you stories about the fun or scary things you've supposedly done together, and if it weren't forbidden you might actually stop and listen, because some of it sound quite interesting.

The other Foot soliders have different names for him: _traitor, Chunin, whore, beast, animal, failure, freak._ Some of those names are ones you hear every day from your so-called teammates, but the words like _traitor,_ _failure_ , and _Chunin_ are unfamiliar, words reserved just for him.

(Sometimes you think it might be nice to have a word reserved just for you, but you know to quash the thought immediately, as it is forbidden)

He calls himself _Leo_ , which is obviously a lie, as he is the enemy and enemies lie. The names the others use don't seem to fit, though, so you find yourselves thinking of him as _Rainbow._

Rainbow is not the only enemy haunting you. There is a white fox, a girl in purple armor, a man in a hockey mask who yells a lot, a collection of mutants led by a one-eyed cat and a very large, very sad snapping turtle. They repeat aspects of Rainbow's litany, speaking in a dozen different accents and employing various levels of profanity.

A few times there is a rat who might also say things, but you can't hear them very well over the endless vicious _fury_ that burns up your head whenever you see him. _Kill kill kill,_ the voice screams, and even if it weren't forbidden resistance would be impossible because there is simply no room for it.

Most of the time, though, it is Rainbow. You can barely go a day without Rainbow upsetting a deal, attempting an attack, making a mess for everyone. He whispers and begs and quietly weeps as he fights. He collects new scars and bruises every time, but he barely seems to notice them.

And he always seems to beat you, ridiculous as that is. Whenever you fight him, your limbs stop working right. You feel lost, off-balance, like you're missing a piece. You expect to die a hundred times over, but you never do.

"I know you're in there," he says, as blood drips from his cuts and your weapons lie in pieces as his feet, stupidly refusing to take the opportunity to end your lives. "I'll find you, I swear on my _life_."

Then he's gone and you have to go home to another failure, another punishment. In his wisdom, Master has you punish each other. That's when you learn that a whip in the hand hurts more than one on the back, that it's more frightening to kneel between somebody's spread legs than to spread them yourself.

You always cry when you have to do this, no matter how many times Kitsune gives you a lecture. "It's just a biological response," she says eventually. "It's not an issue." You don't know who she's talking to, but you decide not to think about it too hard just in case it's forbidden.

Logically (is that word forbidden?) you should hate Rainbow for all the suffering he's caused you. You don't, though. You look at him and you just feel....empty. He's nothing more than a task to be completed for Master, and completed it will be, one day. Master's orders are always carried out. To think otherwise is forbidden.

Rainbow tried to kill Mistress. Tried to kill _Mistress_ , an idea that makes your head swim. The sword shattered on her skin, of course, and Master overpowered him, but they both look rattled nonetheless.

Your opponent waits in one of the more secluded chambers, bound and on his knees. Rainbow's skin is a mass of red blood and dark bruises, until he looks like he's wearing your uniform. His bright colors are stripped away, as are his swords and wrappings, and he looks smaller without them.

It's just you, him, Master, and Mistress there; the others have been sent to secure the perimeter in case Rainbow brought reinforcements. Lucky them, since they don't have to listen to Master go on and on about betrayal and loyalty and honor. Even Mistress is starting to look bored by the end.

Finally, Master turns to you. "Who is this?" he asks, waving at Rainbow. Mistress' eyes sharpen behind her tea at that, flashing with hunger.

"An enemy," you reply in unison, your voices hoarse and painful in your throat. You can't remember the last time you were permitted to make noise.

"And what do we do to enemies?" he presses, digging his fingers into Rainbow's battered chin and forcing him to look at you.

"Destroy them." The Foot Clan can have no enemies. Without the Foot Clan, you are nothing, so you have a responsibility to protect it from its enemies.

"That's right," Master says, giving Rainbow's head a rough shake. "Do you hear that, little traitor?" His voice changes, growing almost sad. "We could have ruled the _world_ together, Leonardo. Instead, you choose to be a backstabbing little _whore."_

Rainbow's head twists and his teeth sink into Master's fingers, prompting a sharp cry. He gives Rainbow a vicious backhand, sending him crashing back onto the carpet. " _Animal!"_ he spits. Mistress smirks, even as her eyes narrow in concentration.

"Boys," Master spits, rounding on you. "I want you to see just how much this little beast can _take."_ You know what that means, would know even if it weren't for Mistress pumping fresh commands through your brains.

You gather back around Rainbow as he struggles back to his knees. "Don't," he pants, a bubble of blood popping on his mouth. "Don't, _please..."_

You've done this kind of thing to each other before, but nobody has ever said _Don't._ Nobody has ever said anything at all, really, not to you. If it wasn't forbidden, if Mistress' power wasn't pouring through your bodies, you might hesitate.

Instead, you let your hands drift over his body, so like yours and yet so similar. You take turns peering into his eyes, trying and failing to determine their color, since they go out of focus whenever you look too long.

You stretch him with spit and his own-still running blood, the way you've often done for each other when asked to perform after a battle. "Stop," he says, making a fruitless attempt to twist out of your grip, and the voice is so firm and determined that you actually do, for a heartbeat. Mistress hisses and lashes your brains with fire for that disobedience, causing all your faces to twitch as one.

At that, Rainbow's stance seems to change as he forces his breathing back into a normal cadence. "It's okay," he says as you gather around him, two of you gathering behind him while the third slides fingers into his mouth. "It's okay, it's not your fault. _I_ _love you."_ You think you can hear a woman's voice screaming in your head, but Mistress drowns her out with an impatient snarl.

If he screams when you enter him, you can't hear it. He bleeds a little, though, and he shakes. He might be getting aroused, too, if Master's comments are anything to go by. Physically the sex feels good, but you don't have much room to enjoy it. You feel like you're watching things from a distance, drifting high overhead.

There's a voice screaming in your head to _stop stop stop,_ but you can't. A part of you wants to, even though you're not supposed to want. The world melts into flesh and heat and tight and scent, and you think you might be crying, your tears mixing with Rainbow's.

Once you've all had a turn with every part of him, you're permitted to stop and watch him collapse into a heap of blood and semen, teeth chattering. You stand around him like a circle of action figures, mechanically putting your cocks away. "Are you happy now, _chunin?"_ Master spits, and you don't think Rainbow is capable of answering.

Somewhere very far away, you hear Mistress laugh. Her laugh is high, musical, sweet, _perfect_ in a way monsters like you can never be. A tiny part of you hates it.

Then the laughter turns into a cough.

You turn and see Mistress coughing, hunched over on her throne as the empty cup slips from her hand. Blood spills from her mouth, shining like lipstick.

"Kitsune?" Master cries, rushing to her side. "Kitsune!" There's real fear in his voice, real pain. You didn't think he was capable of feeling such things.

Mistress wipes off her mouth and raises her hand, a small pool of blood shining in her palm. She peers into it like a scrying bowl, and what she sees turns her white. "Aka," she breathes.

"Your sister gave April one of her feathers," Rainbow croaks out from where he's curled on the floor. "I ground it up, put it your tea. Then you saw me and I had to make it look like another assassination attempt." He draws a rattling breath. "Only an immortal can weaken--can _kill--_ another immortal, remember?"

"That _cunt--"_ Mistress throws up, blood and vomit spilling across the floor as Master roars for a doctor. You don't know what to do, you need orders. You're supposed to protect the clan, but how can you protect Mistress from something inside her?

"You would have found it," Rainbow spits, shifting to his knees with a wince, "If you weren't so busy playing with your _toys."_ Mistress lets out a cry of pain as she falls over and a spike of white agony lances through your heads. You grab your skulls, mouths opening in a roar of soundless cries.

Master lets out a roar and raises his claws, charging--only to jerk to a halt midstep, limbs snapping with whiplash as his armor strains against him. Through a burning haze you see the girl in purple armor materialize out of nowhere, fist raised as she keeps the Master in place, hovering in the air. She is _holding back the Master_ , and the sight shocks you more than the pain.

"Sorry I'm late," she says. The words are flippant, but from the way her words shake you think she really is sorry, sorrier than words can express.

"Like the upgrades?" she asks. "Harold was inspired." Kitsune twitches and jerks at her feet, hands flexing in the air as froth tears up her throat. _Help me,_ she screams in your head, but the other voice is drowning her out now, and you don't know what to do.

Rainbow rises to his feet, swaying. "You should have killed us."

 _Kill yours--_ Mistress' voice is cut off mid-order as the white fox steps through the door (there is the sound of battle in the distance, even though you didn't hear it before now) and hurls a kama into her chest. She lets out a gurgling shriek and Master howls in return.

You should fight, defend them, but it hurts so much and Rainbow's blood slicks your hands and you don't know what to _do._

"Let me go," Master orders. "Your father and I can settle things as warriors should."

Rainbow shakes his head. "You don't deserve death by the _sword,_ Saki, let alone a warrior's death."

"So we decided to crush you like a soda can instead," the purple woman says cheerfully. At this you _finally_ collect yourselves to lunge, but Master is already crumping in on himself with a painful shriek, bones snapping and flesh tearing. Blood sprays everywhere as his voice builds to an ungodly yowl before abruptly cutting off.

You skitter to a stop, shocked. What's left of Master tumbles back to the ground with a vibrating _clang,_ while Mistress' twitches still besides him.

For a heartbeat, there is silence. Then....

The walls inside your heads crash down, sending light to burn up the shadows. You _think,_ you _feel,_ you _know,_ and worst of all you _remember._

A scream that's been locked away for so long explodes through your throats, and you're surprised the glass doesn't crack at the sound.

Your name is Donatello Hamato. You have holes in your brilliant mind from where it was scrubbed clean by an ancient monster, but you remember enough to scratch yourself bloody some nights. You wear purple, and the colors black and red make you nauseous. Your father hobbles around with crutches from when you and your brothers tossed him off a building. 

You live in a lair that is constantly filled with noise: video games, music blaring, talking, arguing, fighting, hysterical laughter. There is an unspoken rule in your family that the TV must always be on and the stereo constantly playing, even if no one is paying attention to either. Noise, even the most senseless noise, is better than the impressive silence that haunts your nightmares.

When Mikey thinks it's still too quiet, he screams. You suppose it's a better coping mechanism than Raph drinking for the sole purpose of picking fights with Casey, or the way Leo will stare into space for hours on end, or your father hiding in his room so he doesn't have to cope with any of this.

You receive constant visits from friends, and it takes you an embarrassingly long amount of time to realize that they're constantly checking in to make sure none of you have offed yourselves. You doubt they would believe you if you told them there's no need to fret, that none of you think you deserve the release of death.

There's no more training. It reminds you too much of Saki's dojo, and besides, the fighting is over. The Kraang are long gone, you're pretty sure you helped Saki "deal with" Bishop at some point, and the Foot is nonexistent: Karai and her mutants died the night you were rescued, along with most of the other soldiers. They might not have done anything, but they let it happen to you, and to Leo when he was _chunin_ before you. You do not mourn them.

Leo can't be touched; he flinches when anyone approaches him, human or mutant. But he stills follows one brother or around all day at a careful distance, watching you to make sure you don't leave again. You let him do this, even though the sight of him always sends a knife of shame into your heart.

You are all broken, but Leo is just a fleshy bag of shards at this point. On the off chance you make eye contact with him, it's like looking through cracked glass.

Every single night, somebody wakes up screaming--usually multiple somebodies. Rushing to comfort each other only makes things worse, especially after the experiences we've had thanks to someone else being in the bed, so you all learn to block out the noise. You tug on headphones and keep working.

"It's not your fault," you and your brothers say to each other. You want so badly to convince each other but how can you do that when the guilt weighs on your own soul regardless of logic?

You know what it's like to kill a man. You know what it's like to be tortured as "discipline." You know what it's like to mouth a cunt while a cock stretches you from the other end, to be used by two adults who care nothing for your pleasure or comfort, let alone your autonomy. You know what it feels like to rape one of your brothers.

(If the thought of having sex with anyone didn't make you nauseous, you'd probably be great in bed).

These feelings are with you, every second in every day. You feel Saki inside you even when there's nothing there, even when you scrub yourself bloody in the shower. You'll play the "Out, Dam'ned Spot" routine until someone drags out of the bathroom, but you'll never get the guts from under your fingers. You'll find yourself looking at a brother and wondering if his come face would be the same if he wasn't unwilling or brainwashed when the orgasm was dragged out of him.

You hate yourself, and you hate the world.

So you have no choice, of course, but to find a problem to throw yourself at. It's how you've survived for so long, and it's how you're surviving now. 

"What are you doing?" Leo asks, sitting against the far wall of your lab, carefully out of reach.

"Fixing things," you reply, kneeling before the slowly rising structure of a massive machine.

"Fixing what?"

You don't reply for a few seconds, sitting back on your knees. In the distance you can hear Mikey playing video games and making himself sick with junk food, babbling through his headset at people whose faces don't stir up dark memories, the only ones he can talk to anymore.

Over that, you can hear the faint sound of Raph cursing while he cleans up some of the new marks Casey left him with. There's also the sound of Sensei clattering to the bathroom (he's too proud to ask for help, and besides, it would mean talking with you). Finally, you listen to Leo's breathing, which you think might have quickened a little from your long silence.

"Everything," you say, turning to the paper laid out before you. You pluck up a pen and decide to bite the bullet, scribbling _Time Machine_ across the top of the diagram.

It's a ridiculous idea, out of science fiction--just like you. Maybe it'll bring you down in a fiery ball of flames, maybe it'll dump you in ancient Egypt, maybe it'll actually take you where you want to go and you'll have to deal with the consequences of that.

You glance in the corner, where you're storing Kitsune's body in a refrigerator. You went to get it the night after your reawakening, when everyone else was screaming and crying at each other in an insane cacophony and you had to get out, go do _something._

 _Only an immortal can kill another mortal,_ Leo had said. And now that Kitsune's dead, extracting and reshaping her bones into weapons is, well....it's not the most gruesome task you've ever had to perform.

You're still calculating the risk, of course, still trying to decide whether it's worth risking the space-time continuum rather than trying to heal the normal way. But the sense of control, of being able to do _something,_ helps ground you. However this ends, you hope it'll give you a chance to ground your brothers.

"It's going to be okay," you promise Leo, fitting a strut in place. You have no idea if it's true, but the fact that you have the strength and will to say, is, in its own small pathetic way, a victory.

You are Donatello Hamato, and nothing will ever be forbidden to you again.


	17. Quake

April narrows her eyes and watches her pencil weave back and forth over her math homework, little scratches ringing with the room. Lifting big things is one matter, but tasks of this precision are something else entirely. Push too hard and...

The pencil skids off the page and tumbles into the corner with a clatter. "Shit," April mutter, lifting it back up as the door opens.

"April, sweetie, I'm ordering--Jesus  _ fuck!" _

Her father almost topples over as the pencil falls to the floor. There's a moment of silence, and then they both speak at once:

"Did you just--"

"I didn't--"

"How--"

"It's not what--"

"What did they  _ do  _ to you?" he bursts out. "Those turtles, did they--they--"

"It wasn't them!" April says quickly. "This is one of the ways the Kraang altered me, dad."

He grips the size of her door to steady himself. "What...what else can you do?"

"Um...lift things? Pick up on people's emotions, sometimes."  _ Disintegrate one of my friends and bring him back to life _ . "It's not that big a deal, reall--"

"Not that big a deal?" He lets out a harsh laugh. "Not that big a fucking  _ deal?" _ He lets out a harsh laugh. "Oh, god, April....oh, baby."

He sinks to his knees and hugs himself, shaking his head. April takes a step towards him and he flinches backward, eyes wild. "Don't, don't, I....I'm sorry. I just can't right now."

And before April can even process  _ that, _ he looks up at her and says, "Is Donatello working on a cure? Like he did for me?"

"What?" April stares. "Dad, these...alterations, they happened before I was  _ born.  _ It goes a lot deeper than anything retromutagen can reach. And..." She sucks in a breath. "I wouldn't give rid of them even if I could."

For all the baggage that comes with them, all the memories that will keep her up at night, these powers have saved her and her loved ones more often than she can count. They've become part of her identity in the process, like ninjitsu or her bond with the turtles.

She's still trying to put all into this words when her dad's jaw drops open. "You...are you  _ shitting _ me?"

April stares. "Dad?"

"The fuckers who killed your mother turned you into a  _ science experiment _ and you're okay with it?" he asks, and he looks so betrayed.

She shakes her head wildly. "What--no, I'm not  _ okay  _ with it, I just--"

"Just want to use the powers that were bought with your mother's  _ blood _ ." She can feel his terror crawling along her skin, and worse than that his fury. "Just want to  _ practice  _ with them, want to turn yourself into a...a...." He claps a hand over his mouth.

"Dad," April says, hearing her voice echo from a distance. "Dad, I--you're okay with the  _ turtles,  _ this really isn't anything different."

"The turtles are," he shrugs helplessly. "The  _ turtles.  _ I mean, they're the weird quasi-pets who save you sometimes and drag you straight to hell on others. Jesus, when I was that bat I..." He waves a hand next to his head and lets out a burst of semi-hysterical laughter. "Besides, this is  _ deeper,  _ remember? You said so yourself."

"No, I..." She's going about this all wrong, and what he just said about the turtles is throwing her for a loop. "They're not  _ pets,  _ dad. They're people, like me. And these powers..." She wants to say they're not dangerous, but she imagines it's pretty obviously bullshit. "I can control them."  _ Now, anyway. _ "I'm still me."

"Are you?" he asks, shaking his head. "They rewrote your genetic code, April, and you're taking advantage of it, like it's a  _ gift.  _ Like what happened to your mother and I...like it was a  _ good  _ thing."

She can't believe this. "So I should just stop? Stop using these powers to protect myself and my friends?"

"Obviously!" he yells. "You don't  _ have  _ to protect yourself anymore, April. You're safe now. If you keep throwing yourself into situations where you have do....that, well..." He shakes his head. "You're letting them the Kraang turn into a weapon all over again. You're making a mockery of your mother's sacrifice."

April feels the mirror crack in the bathroom.

"Excuse me?" she breathes. A bit of her heart might be breaking away, but she can barely feel it under the fire burning up her veins.

"You..." He groans. "I get it, it must have been fun, been cool, all that  _ power.  _ But I'm going to have put my foot down on this, April. You're a human, not a mutant, we both  _ know  _ you are. Indulging  _ this... _ " He waved at all of her. "It's only going to make things worse."

" _ This,"  _ she bites out. "Is one of the reasons we still have a fucking  _ planet,  _ dad."

He stares. "Excuse me?"

"My powers helped save the world," she tells him. "And you don't know that because my 'pets' and I rewound  _ time  _ to do it."

Kirby just shakes his head. "This, this is the type of stuff your mother and I were trying to keep you away from, April. This insanity _..." _ He runs his hands over his balding head with a groan. "You're giving up your soul for it."

"My  _ soul _ ? Are you fucking shitting me? What is this,  _ Carrie _ ?"

" _ This  _ is you refusing to be human, to be my  _ daughter _ , so you can go act like an alien, a--" he cuts himself off.

"Like a what, dad?" she asks, her voice soft and sweet and oh-so-dangerous. "Like a what? Tell me."

She reaches out for him again, silently begging him to apologize, to say he'd never  _ think  _ such a thing. Her hand brushes his, and he flinches away again, but not before the word flickers between their minds:  _ abomination. _

April staggers backwards and turns away, grabbing for her weapons. "I'm going out," she says.

"Excuse me? Back to those lunatics who think that exploring your superweapon side is  _ okay?" _ He steps forward, jaw clenched. "They've helped us, sure, but this is going too far if they want you to fight their  _ battles  _ for them."

He scrubs his hand through his hair. "Look, I...Just come into the kitchen and I'll see if I can call some people. My Kraang Survivors Anonymous Group, they might know somebody...."

" _ Know  _ somebody? What the hell are you talking about?" She feels fear flicker through her, under the rising waves of anger and pain.

"Talking about  _ fixing  _ this," her father replies. He sucks in a breath, as if to prepare himself and takes a step closer. "You need help, April, and it's my fault for not realizing it sooner."

"There's nothing wrong with me," April says, forcing her voice to calm. She tries to think about the way her bedsheets have started to rustle behind her or the weight of her father's thoughts pressing in on her head.

"It's okay," Kirby says. He doesn't seem to be hearing her anymore, his eyes going bright and desperate. "It's going to be okay, all right? I'll, I'll figure something out.  _ We'll  _ figure something out."

April's trying to think of something to say when her father's hand closes around her wrist, fingers carefully, gently wrapping around her sleeve. His fingers are shaking, his eyes are huge with fear and desperate love, and she  _ feels-- _

_ Months trapped in the shadows of the Kraang labs, watching them push the limits of reality, watching them make monsters out of people and animals, and now to find out that his  _ daughter  _ is one of those-- _

"Let me go," she whispers hoarsely. She can take him down in a second, but she can't do that to her father, she knows there's a way out of this if only she can get her heart to stop  _ racing _

"Calm down, April," he says, as if they're  _ both  _ not freaking the fuck out right now. "You're just confused, you need  _ help." _ He's nodding frantically, expression going wild with hope. "You'd never, never  _ betray _ us if you were in your right--"

And his hand is resting on her shoulder, pulling her close, and if her mind wasn't full of horrified fury she might remember the differences between him and all the other men who've tried to bring her under control, or at least notice the irony of comparing her father to the Kraang, but instead there's a flash of panic burning everything away.

Her dad goes flying, through the door, across the apartment. He lands with a world-shaking  _ thump,  _ a sickening crack, and a shriek of pain.

There's silence.

"Mr. O'Neil?" That's one of the neighbors, coming to a stop in their journey down the hall. April's father lets out a groan, face white and leg sticking out at an awkward angle.

"Mr. O'Neil, are you all right?" The words are distant behind the scream ripping April's soul apart. She can hear footsteps coming closer as her father's eyes roll up in his head.

Like a coward, she runs. She sprints across the rooftops of New York City, strangers' voices buzzing at the edge of her mind while roof slates tear away beneath her feet.

Leo feels it first. His eyes snap open from where he's meditating in the dojo, but before he can put words to what he's just sensed when the walls start to shake.

The weapons rattle in their casings, the utensils clack against each other in the kitchen, Raph's weights bump together, and the TV quivers on its stand. Ice Cream Kitty lets out a whimper from her box, while Donnie barely manages to keep his test tube from falling over.

"An earthquake?" Mikey asks, hugging Kitty to his chest.

"There aren't any earthquakes in New York," Donnie replies, hurrying out of the lab. "We don't have any fault lines, it's impossible _." _

"It's not  _ another  _ goddamn invasion, is it?" Raph demands.

"Not according to the detection systems," Donnie says, flipping through his shell cell. "Maybe--fuck!" They all clap their hands over their earslits as a painful whine slices through their brains, a babbling voice hissing _pain fear run hide._ It's gone as abruptly as it appeared, leaving them all gaping at each other in horror.

"April," Leo breathes.

They sprint through the tunnels, Donnie poking at his phone in a frantic attempt to determine her location. Leo rounds a corner and crashes to a halt, a row of brothers of slamming into his shell with panicked shrieks.

"The fuck?" Raph demands, staggering upright. Leo just points.

April kneels in a heap of garbage, hair spilling from her ponytail and drifting ever so slightly through the air. Her hands are pressed against the ground, cracks splitting between her fingers.

The tunnel around them is vibrating so hard the turtles have to clench their jaws to keep their teeth from chattering. Overhead, they can hear the faint, panicked squeal of car wheels and confused shouts.

"April?" Mikey asks, taking a step forward. "April, are you okay?"

Her head snaps up, eyes glowing white, and Donnie's breath catches with the memory of rainy days and splitting molecules. "Stay back," she grits out. "Stay back, I _can't--_ I'm _sorry."_

"What happened?" Leo asks. "It's--it's not Za-Naron again, is it?"

She lets out a harsh laugh at that and the tunnel ripples around them, stones snapping and grinding. "Just me. My dad-- _aargh!"_ She grabs her head as a wave of emotion spills through them: _grief loss abandonment rejecting hate anger shame._

"Mother _fucker,"_ Raph breathes.

"Look, April," Leo says, raising his hands with a conciliatory expression, as if she can't feel his terror. "Whatever happened, it's going to be okay. You just need to breathe and--"

"I hurt him," she whispers. "I hurt him, I didn't mean to, but I _hurt_ him and I can't _stop_ and I can hear, I can hear _everything..."_

She's crying now and Mikey moves, by instinct, to smooth the tears away. His hands brush her skin and just like that he feels the _everything,_ a wave of eight million sensations from New York's citizens. _Fear lust panic confusion joy bad day at work good day at school impending loss approaching success something's wrong shopping list since when do we have earthquakes?_

"Aargh!" He topples backward into Leo's arms, face twisted with pain. "Oh my god, Ape..." A few seconds in that storm almost knocked him unconscious; what must it be like for her?

"I'm so sorry," April sobs, tears spilling out of her eyes and flying around her head like bullets. "I--I--" Her breath hitches and strains, in time with the clanging and grinding of the pipes overhead.

"April, I think you might be having a panic attack, Donnie says, trying to ignore the instincts screaming _run run run away._ "I need you to, um, breathe with me. That's it, just breathe." He takes slow, exaggerated breaths, giving his brothers significant looks until they join in.

April follows along, or tries to, but her breath come too deep and too deep, and little puffs of dust spill down the wall with each one. There are running feet overhead, someone distantly yelling about 9/11.

 _Just run,_ she begs them silently. _Run, I can't--I can't control it anymore, I don't know what to do, I can't let it happen again..._

"Never," Raph snarls.

She lets out a shriek and that's all the warning they get before the ground splits open. They scramble backward, away from the rapidly spreading pit as someone screams overhead, accompanied by the familiar sound of glass breaking.

Donnie doesn't hesitate before vaulting over the pit, and it's only in midair that he remembers the first time he used his bo to try and reach April, all those years ago. If the gods are cruel, then this will be the end of everything, just as that first time was the beginning. Lucky for him he doesn't believe in any gods.

He lands in front of April--alone, none of the others have the tools to follow. An idea flashes into his mind, and he doesn't have time to think of anything better before the sewer falls on their heads, so he grits his teeth and reaches out to cup April's face.

The wave of _noise_ sends him rocking, but the end of the bo grinds into the dirt and pushes him back upright. He bites his lip bloody, shoves the howling fear deep down, peers at her squeezed-shut eyes...and start reciting the order of operations.

She's everywhere, she's everything, all the walls built up after Za-Naron have been _pushed_ and _pushed_ until they finally crumbled. She can hear New York babbling to itself in her head, and knows it won't be long before she's crazy as it sounds. She almost welcomes it.

 _Abomination_ _betrayal_ and what if he's right, what if she's been betraying her mom's memory for _years?_ What if what if what if

_Parentheses Exponent Multiplication Division Addition_ _Subtraction_

The voice cuts through her panic like a knife. It's drowned out almost immediately, but it rushes back, regular and determined as the ocean waves.

_Any number raised to the power of one equals the number itself. Any number raised to the power of zero, except zero, equals one._

She recognizes the lifeline when it's offered and grabs on to it, letting out a desperate gasp.

_Entropy always increases with time. The entropy of a closed system never decreases._

Whoever's speaking is terrified, just like everyone else, but they're making an effort to shove the fear away. She doesn't know why--she's _dangerous,_ intractable. Za-Naron proved that.

 _Za-Naron..._ she groans at the memory of Donnie shattering into nothing.

 _I'm okay,_ the voice says. _I'm okay, and so are you. I'm here for you, April. The seven branches of physics are mechanics, thermodynamics, vibrations and wave phenomena, optics, electromagnetism, relativity, and quantum mechanics._

 _You're not okay,_ she gasps. _You're dead, I killed you, Splinter's dead and my mother's dead and my father hates me and it's_ **not getting better, Donnie.**

 _I know,_ he murmurs. _I know. But we're still alive, Ape. I'm alive and so are you. I'm_ **sane** _and so are you. The four components of the double helix are adenine, thymine, cytosine, and guanine._

 _Too_ **much** , April wails. _It's too much. Do you know where I am, Donnie? I'm the man at the hot dog stand and the imam at the mosque and the hooker in the alley and the mayor and the girl thinking about suicide. I can feel them, I can feel everything, and its hurts so bad._

 _Follow my voice,_ Donnie begs, and from far away she thinks she can feel him gripping her shoulders. _Please, April. I feel it, too. I know how much it hurts. The formula for force is mass times acceleration. We can help you. We're always here to help you. The formula for power is work divided by time. We know you're not a monster or a traitor; your father's just confused. We love you, April. We can handle this._

_Until I hurt you. You...you've taken too many risks for me, Donnie._

_And you've taken plenty for us. That's what family means, April._ He opens a window in his head and she sees....not thoughts or memories, no, but a safe, empty, quiet white place.

 _I built it for myself after the bad things,_ Donnie explains, not needing to elaborate on what "bad things" he's talking about. _It's not perfect, but it helps. It can help you, too. The square root of the sides of a triangle add up to the hypotenuse._

She wants to go, she wants to go so badly, but... _What if this happens again?_

 _Then we'll do this again,_ he says simply, because really it's just one of the many impossible things that's been asked off him over the years. _Za-Naron is dead, April. You killed her. We'll never let you fall that far again._

The noise is still ear-crushing, but she can hear long and clear, and April chooses to believe. She sucks in a breath and steps into his quiet place, into his silence.

Her heart is still bleeding from what her father did, but now she has a chance to _breathe_ , to make repairs. April lets the storm melt away through her fingers, focuses on centering herself without the distractions.

Then her eyes flicker open as a piece of concrete crashes down on their heads. April raises her hands and catches it in midair, crumbling it to dust.

Donnie falls back with a groan, eyes huge and--to her horror--a fresh wave of blood trickling from his nose. "You okay?" he asks, rubbing at his throbbing skull.

April launches forward on her hands and throws up into the pit she's created. On the other side, she can see the others peeking around the corner where they must have taken refuge from the massive stone chips she thinks she sent flying around (now buried in the wall) at some point. They're still in the middle of peeling the terrified expressions off their faces.

"Right," Donnie says, patting her on the back. "Yeah..."

"Really, it's fine," Donnie says, dabbing at his nose as he sits next to April on the couch. "Considering what happened last ti--" He cuts himself off midsentence and April raises an eyebrow. "Look, no one died."

"I called Karai and Shini," Leo announces, walking by in his black mask. "We'll go to the hospital and talk her father into not telling anyone about us." He sees April's look. "It's fine, I'll make sure they don't hurt him."

"Much," Casey says, sulking in the corner because he and Raph aren't allowed to join the Intimidation Squad. Leo made him come talk about what happened in person because he knew Casey would have rushed off to kick the shit out of April's father if they'd told him over the phone.

Okay," April says, looking at her hands. She knows that there's no easy fix to what happened with her and her father today; she's not sure when she'll be able to talk to him, let alone when she'll go back up to the noisy, thought-infested surface.

Lucky her, she's already built herself a little community of outcasts already.

The TV turns on and April winces at the sight of a reporter standing in front of the camera, going on about the "mysterious earthquake" that turned New York on its head. No one was killed, thank god, but apparently there were quite a few injuries and it scared the shit out of everyone.

"Gimme that," Raph mutters, going for the remote, which basically counts as kicking off a WWE match in this household. As she lets herself disappear into a scrum of limbs and angry squawks, April wonders whether they'll let her or Donnie win tonight.

She's broken, and she doesn't know how much "better" she'll get. But Donnie's right: she's still alive, she's still sane, and that means there's still a chance for them all.


	18. Ravaged

_Squish. Squish. Squish._

The sound echoes in Mikey's head as he creeps down the ship corridor, even though he _knows_ he's walking silently. He _knows._ He checked and rechecked his feet for stains, even got up the courage to ask Leo if he could see anything.

_Squish. Squish. Squish._

No one can hear him. There's a faint screaming inside his skull and no one can hear that, either.

_Squish. Squish. Squish._

It's the sound of sentient beings dying under his feet. It's the sound of revenge, brutal and effective. It's the sound of a murder that barely anyone commented on, as if the size of the victims somehow meant that their deaths mattered less to their families or their--their killer.

_Squish. Squish. Squish._

He wonders if his brain sounded like that when the aliens walked on it, when they _violated_ it. When they violated _him,_ broke down all his precious walls they were nothing, like _he_ was nothing.

_Squish. Squish. Squish._

He slips into the holodeck, because he has to go _somewhere._ Anything to not be lying in bed, alone with the squishing and the scuttling and the shrieking.

Mikey closes his eyes and concentrates, grabbing onto the first idea that comes into mind because if he goes any deeper into his own head he'll never get out. When he opens them he's standing on a ledge above the city, New York's skyline winking and shifting around him in a shadow-laced Technicolor rainbow.

He lurches up on his toes, swaying precariously as he tries to imagine the wind brushing his face and rippling through his mask. The drop grows farther and farther as he looks down, until the pavement looks miles away. He can see little shadows scurrying by below, ants going about their business.

If he jumped, would his brothers be able to reach him before someone else scraped up the green stain and carted it away for science? Would they even bother trying to retrieve him, or would they be too furious at him for leaving in the first place?

Mikey lifts one foot and sways it over the edge, toes flexing and curling. He's alone up here, alone except for the whispers in his heart and the holes in his brain matter. If he dropped over the edge, his head would shatter like a pumpkin on the unforgiving concrete.

~~You can't rape a smashed pumpkin.~~

He steps over the edge and awkwardly stumbles onto the floor as the projecting automatically switches off. Mikey growls, regaining his balance, angry at himself for even _thinking_ that and the holodeck for offering them so much while never being quiet enough.

His hand starts to curl into a fist, and Mikey watches as a weapon takes shape between his fingers. He's never held a gun before, has no idea how it actually works, but he's watched enough TV and movies to get a pretty good idea of its form and function.

He's not in the mood for the playful chaos of his nunchucks tonight. He wants to wreak _havoc_.

The scenery around him transforms into a forest, buzzing with insects and the soft rustle of animals, mist slinking between the cool green trees. Rahzar emerges from the shadows, teeth glinting with a vicious hunger. "Had enough, brat?" he asks.

Mikey raises the gun to his shoulder and fires, the _bang_ cutting through his earslits. Rahzar's head snaps backward, a crimson spray pumping into the air as he tumbles to the ground with a thud.

The shadows shift and melt until it's Shredder emerging from the trees, helmet glinting cold and bright. "Are you ready to die, spawn of Hamato Yoshi?" he asks.

"Fuck you," Mikey whispers, and fires.

"Stand down, cub."

_Bang._

"Bow before my mi--"

_Bang._

"Freak--"

_Bang._

"Stupid--"

_Bang._

"Let's go, little--"

_Bang._

Rocksteady falls, but instead of being replaced by another villain it's _Splinter_ standing there, looking graceful and wise and oh-so-disappointed.

"Where were you?" Mikey whispers, peering at him down the gun sight. "Where the _fuck_ were you, old man?" A distant part of him is shocked at him for saying and doing such things, but it's drowned out by the silence of the bloody forest.

"You should have handled it on your own, my son," Splinter says, just shaking his head. "You should have been stronger, paid better attention, protected yourself so your brothers wouldn't have to risk _everything_ for you."

"Fuck you," Mikey whispers. "You're not here, you don't get to judge _shit._ You weren't here for me, you weren't there for Raph or Donnie, you weren't there for Leo and he's your goddamn _favorite,_ it took _ages_ before you were there for Karai."

"You would speak to your Sensei in such a way?" Splinter growls, tail cracking and eyes glaring in a way that used to send shivers down Mikey's spine because it meant he'd fucked up _again_ and was going to be punished.

He grits his teeth and shoves the fear away, because anything his father could do is candy compared to what happened today. "Fuck. You," he repeats, and fires, the noise ringing in his ears. His father melts into a spray of crimson fur.

"Mikey?"

 _Fuck._ Mikey whirls to the door, the forest, the gun, and his father's corpse melting back to the soothing greys and whites of the holodeck. It's _Raph,_ of all people, because of _course_ it is. Mikey couldn't have woken up Leo or April or the Fugitoid or anyone who _doesn't_ handle emotional matters like a bull in a china shop.

"You okay?" Raph asks, rubbing his eyes.

"Fine," Mikey says cheerfully. "Just shooting rainbows out of my ass and whistling Dixie, thank you very fucking much. I'll be all be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed again by the next episode."

His brother flinches at that, with shock and maybe a little hurt, and Mikey feels bad. He's never talked to Raph like this, and this is probably the worse time to start, especially when Raph is trying to _help_ for once. But....well.

Raph and the others broke into his mind too, didn't they? Sure, they were trying to help--they saved his _life_ , for shit's sake, and it's ridiculous to be mad at them. But they still tromped through his brain, going places they had no right to go, seeing things they had no right to see.

It's almost worse than what the aliens did in some ways, because his brothers _understood_ what they saw, recognized the symbols they encountered and actually took the time to study them. They know just how weird and childish his internal landscape is now, and that makes the whole things a thousand times more frightening and humiliating.

Of course it could have been so much worse. They could have found the rooms full of sex fantasies, or the entire pools of unshed tears. They could have stumbled on the cage with a hungry monster inside, the same beast that unsheathed its fangs and crushed the invaders to nothing beneath its feet.

Still, Mikey's in no mood to discuss today's clusterfuck with anyone, let alone Raph, who undoubtably thinks the inside of Mikey's mind is the dumbest, girliest place in the cosmos. He turns away, hoping his brother will get the message and leaves Mikey to his freakish emo activities in peace.

He doesn't. "Do you, uh, do you wanna spar?"

"Seriously?" Mikey's shocked by the sudden burst of anger that blasts up through his veins. "Do I wanna _spar?_ I have the shit kicked out of me enough during the _day_ , thank you very much. Why the fuck would I want to do it on my off time, too? To celebrate baby's first mindfuck? Or maybe stomp on my face like you did with my brain?"

He freezes after the last word, the first time he admitted what actually happened today. Raph's face works, and for a moment Mikey wonders if he'll lunge. If he does, Mikey won't fight back. He'll let Raph pound and pound until neither of them have to feel anything anymore.

But instead his brother takes a breath and mutters something that seems to be _like water over stone_. "I know what it's like to lose control of yourself," he says, stepping forward. "To be.... _violated_ in a way most people have never even heard of.

The brain worm. A part of Mikey winces with sympathy, but another, angrier part of him snarls, "So fucking what? When it happened to _you_ you trashed your room, punched me in the face, and ran off on a drinking binge with Casey. Forgive me if I'm not treating you like a fountain of wisdom, Jessica Jones."

"Don't--" Raph takes several steps forward, shaking fists clenched at his side.

"Don't what?" Mikey raises an eye ridge. "Don't mention the obvious? Don't mention that you're as fucked up as I am?" He smirks, hard and mean. "Come on daddy, beat all the demons outta me. Maybe then I'll get some sleep." He places a finger gun in his mouth and pulls the trigger, knowing how ridiculous he looks and not giving a fuck.

"Stop that," Raph hisses, grabbing his hand. "Stop--I'm here to--I don't _want--"_ He stands there for a few seconds, chest heaving, and Mikey gazes stonily back, unwilling (and unable) to help.

 _"Fuck,"_ Raph hisses, rubbing his eyes. "Fuck, I--you're right. We shouldn't have let it happen to you. We....We shouldn't have gone into your head like that, and I....I'm sorry it happened to you."

Mikey's heart twitches at the words, and he gazes down at his feet. "What am I supposed to say to that?" he says quietly. "You saying sorry, that's supposed to make things better?" The words are harsh, but his voice is mellow. He doesn't really want to hurt Raph, even though the angry words seem to be drowning out the noise in his head a little.

"No," Raph says. "I don't know if I _can_ make things better, not really."

He places a hand on Mikey's shoulder; Mikey's hand twitches as if to smack it away, but doesn't follow through on the motion. "But I'm not going to let you go through this alone. After the--" His breath catches, and his jaw tenses before he can force the word out, "-- _worm,_ things mighta gone a lot worse for me if Casey hadn't been there. So c'mon."

He tugs Mikey out of the holodeck. "Where are we going?" Mikey asks, wondering if it's worth the effort to try twisting out of his brother's grip.

"Out of that creepy fucking machine. Siddown." Raph shoves Mikey into his room and onto the bed. He drops to his knees and pulls out a laptop, flipping it open.

"Donnie fucked with the maker and internet signals and shit, out a way to watch movies up here," Raph explains to Mikey's stare. "He helps me watch porm and _Supernatural_ in exchange for cutting down on the drinking."

Mikey raises an eyeridge. "You like _Supernatural?_

"Fuck you, they've got a lot to a say about manliness--"

"Not to mention a shit ton of chiseled abs."

"Shut up." Raph sits beside him and grabs a sheet of instructions, muttering as he works his way through the laptop. "So, what do you want to watch?"

_"The Princess and the Frog."_

Raph looks at him. Mikey looks back.

" _Fine,"_ Raph growls, holding up Donnie's instructions and squinting. "Here's hoping I don't blow the thing up."

So that's what they do. They sit together, thousands of lightyears away from home, and watch a movie about magic and true love, where bad things happen, but everybody's minds are their own.

They watch until the noise fades in Mikey's head, until he doesn't have to clench his brother's hand quite so hard with every spike of sound. Raph makes snappy comments and periodically pretends to fall asleep, but he doesn't leave, and he doesn't mention what happened again.

"I love you," Mikey says as they watch the main characters approach their happy endings. "You're a crappy brother sometimes, but I love you."

"Eat shit," Raph murmurs, and pulls him close.


	19. Settling

It's the night of Shredder's death, which Raph always thought he'd be celebrating with a can of beer and maybe some fireworks. Instead he's standing in the little boy's room at fucking Foot headquarters, listening to one brother puke in a closed stall (Donnie had refused to let anyone in with him) while another rinses off a bloody sword in a trough that looks designed specifically for that purpose.

As for his third, smallest brother....who knows? Certainly not Raph. He has to trust that Mikey has found a safe place to sleep, that he's not hungry, that he's not too scared without his big brothers besides him. He has to try and thinking about all the terrible things that could happen to his little brother on his own, the same terrible things that happened to Raph in his place.

"You _sure_ you're okay?" he asks Donnie's stall door, because if he doesn't do _something_ he'll run off and try to organize a search party for a brother who doesn't want to be found, a brother who _quit_ his family, something Raph wasn't even aware you could do.

"'M fine," his brother mumbles back. "Readjusting to life outside the robot is....difficult. My ol-- _my body_ isn't in tip-top shape yet." Then there's more retching.

A Foot ninja steps into the bathroom and jerks to the halt at the sight of them, eyes going huge. Raph jerks his thumb. "Move it along, lardass." The soldier blinks and Raph wonders if there's going to be a fight, but then the guy disappear, taking Raph's hopes with him.

He turns away and is considering the virtues of writing something rude on the walls (it is their place now, so it'd sort of be defacing their own stuff) when he notices Leo. His brother kneels by the trough with water dripping from his sword, head cocked as if listening for something, staring into space in a way that's very different from his usual meditation.

"Leo?" Raph asks, dropping down cautiously besides him. "You okay, dude?"

"This is where I went," Leo says, not looking at him. "Here or one of the other bathrooms. The dojo wasn't safe and Karai could always come my room--I didn't get a lock." He laughs a little, the kind of laugh that doesn't sound funny at all. "I never even wondered why I didn't get a lock. But I..." He sighs, looking down at his sword. "I needed a place to mourn. For you."

"Oh," Raph says quietly. And then, " _Oh."_ _But....you're dead,_ Leo had said to him once. Raph hadn't grasped what he meant until now.

"So when I couldn't hold back the tears, I'd go here." Leo jerks his head at the shower stall. "Always showers, never baths. Baths made me feel worse, reminded me of you."

Raph blinks. "We never took baths together."

"Not in this life," Leo says, glancing at their reflections in the sword blade.

Oh, right, the reincarnation thing. Raph never really believed in that stuff, but enough people have died because of it that he thinks he might change his mind.

Leo sighs, sheathing the blade as they stand up. "One time, a group of men tried to surprise me in the shower," he says matter-of-factly. "They didn't think an abomination should be put in such a position of power." He glances at Raph, shifting his feet. "So I...punished them. Brutally. No permanent damage, but only so Shredder wouldn't lost any warriors. I got the bathroom to myself after that."

Silence, even from Donnie. Raph's not sure if he's listening or just worn out from all the fighting and puking.

Leo stares at himself in the mirror, biting his lip. "I hate him," he whispers, and Raph doesn't have to ask who he's talking about. "I was so glad to see him dead. But...." His fist clenches. "I loved him, once. I was _made_ to love him, but it didn't feel any less real."

He looks at his toes. "There was a part of me that wanted to save him when he died. There's a part of me that's _mourning."_ He strikes himself in the side of the head with his fist, too fast for Raph to stop him. "Isn't that fucked up?"

Raph doesn't know what to say, isn't entirely sure he's not hallucinating right now. However, he's very sure he'd like to bring Shredder back to life so they can kill him several more times, very slowly.

"You're not fucked up," Donnie says, emerging from the stall, looking pale and drawn. "The people who did this to you are the fucked up ones." He sways, and Raph rushes to catch him.

Leo seems to chew on that for a few more seconds before turning back to them. "Okay. Um, do you want anything from the cafeteria?"

The cafeteria. Of course there's a cafeteria, and of course Leo knows exactly where it is, same way he knows where the bathroom are. Aloud, Raph says, "Nah, all that rabbit food's probably poisoned anyway."

"And I'd probably just throw whatever I got back up," Donnie says, patting his belt pockets. "I should call the Fugitoid..."

"Later," Leo says, pulling the gentle-yet-firm Leader Face back on so quickly that Raph is startled by how obvious a mask it is. "We can fit into my old room tonight. I'll talk to some body about getting bedding." Raph would have preferred to run off with Casey the way Alopex had left with Angel, but he's not making the trek to his place with two traumatized brothers in tow (even if it gave them an opportunity to look for the missing one).

So they head back into the wall, where a group of Foot ninja act like they haven't been staring at the door and whispering immediately start walking off in different direction.

"And good night to you, too, stalkers," Raph says, throwing his best approximation of a middle finger. A ninja jerks to a halt and opens his mouth, only for a friend to roughly drag him off by the arm.

 _They're afraid of us,_ Raph thinks, and the idea isn't as cool as it once was now that he's supposed to be _living_ with these people.

Leo calls one of the less-spooked looking ninja over and speaks to him in rapid-fire Japanese, his words precise and officious. He's ever inch the commanding _chunin_ , and it freaks Raph a little.

"Where's Splinter?" Donnie asks, glancing around from where he's clinging to Raph's arm.

"Said something about mourning him in peace," Raph says. He scoffs, "I can't believe we're building a _tomb_ for that fucker." One of the Foot ninja stops and stares at him, and Raph raises an eyeridge. "What's up, buddy? Wanna defend the honor of the dearly departed Office Supply in Chief?"

_Please start something. Please. Then we can fight our way out of here and go find Mikey before a monster finds him and get out of this fucking fever dream._

But the man just studies Raph for a second before glancing at Leo, who's finishing talking to whoever's just been assigned blanket duty and is giving them a Look. Then he bows his head and marches away.

"Freaks," Raph mutters, and hauls Donnie after Leo. 

They round one corner, then another. Leo stiffens as they pass by the throne room, before abruptly quickening his pace. That's how they almost run smack into Kitsune as they turn the next corner.

She's surrounded by a coterie of guards, a fresh sheen of soap on her hands, and Raph realizes with a start that she must have prepared Saki's body for burial. She glides to a halt at the sight of them, mouth gliding into a predator's smirk. "Good evening," she says, bowing her head.

Her eyes flick to Leo. "Good to see you, _chunin._ You're looking well."

Raph glances at his brother and sees that he's not moving, not speaking, not breathing. His jaw is clenched, he's staring straight ahead, and anyone who doesn't know Leo as well as Raph does might not recognize his expression for the look of pure _terror_ it is.

 _You're dead,_ his voice echoes. And this is the being who made him think that.

In an instant he's on the other side of the hall, shoving the guards aside and slamming her against the wall. A part of him recoils at treating an unarmed woman this way, but she's not a woman, is she? She's poison in a meat suit.

His suspicions gather evidence from how quickly she regains her breath. "I-"

"Shut up." Raph presses a sai to her throat. "Listen to me: You don't talk to him, you don't look at him, you don't fucking _breath_ on him, ever. If you ever pull a stunt like that again I swear ta god I will find a way to kill you, _whatever_ the fuck you are, and you can rot with your batshit-crazy boyfriend."

Her face works--not with fear, but with anger, and for a heartbeat he can hear a distant roar at the edge of his temples. But then Kitsune relaxes in his grip, a beatific smile worming onto her face.

"What a vicious little thing you are," she purrs. "You could have wreaked such _havoc_ on my leash. Pity Saki insisted on breaking the favorite instead."

(Favorite. Raph had been quietly angry about that, about the fact that he'd been captured too, only to be released like a too-small fish for the _superior_ target. Jealousy had turned to self-loathing after he'd learned exactly what had happened to his brother, what Leo had endured in Raph's place).

He lets out an animalistic scream and his other sai is flashing, slicing through her perfect black ponytail so it slithers to the ground like a black snake. Gasps ring out around him.

Kitsune lurches backward as if burned, eyes shifting to solid yellow. "You will _bleed_ for that," she whispers. The buzz in his head grows louder, but they both grit their teeth, him from defiance and her with self-control, and then it melts away.

"Knock yourself out, lady," Raph says, and turns away. "She's all yours," he mutters to the shocked-looking guards.

He rounds on the group of Foot soldiers who've gathered around them, gaping. They didn't lift a finger to protect Kitsune, anymore than they lifted a finger to help Leo or Splinter or Casey or _anyone._ "Show's over, motherfuckers!" he roars, and is gratified to see a few of them jump.

Raph returns to his brothers; Donnie's leaning against the wall, and Raph feels guilt for leaving him like that. As for Leo, well...he's regained motor functions, at least. Raph steers them both through the crowd, which parts like an insane version of the Red Sea.

As they round a corner he glances back to see Kitsune being led away, her hair visibly regrowing with each step. Because of fucking _course_ it is.

They make it to Leo's old room without another incident. There's a guy with a scar over his eye there, holding a bundle of mats and pillows. Leo takes them with a bow. "Thank you, Aito." The man returns a deeper bow. "It is my honor to serve, _chunin."_

"I'm not--" But the guy's already gone, and Leo sighs as he shoulders open the door. "I gave him that scar," he says, after they've filed into a bare little room with a dead plant in the corner.

Raph and Donnie both stare. "Uh--are why we shouldn't put those beds through the wash again? Could he have messed with them?" Donnie asks. They are, after all, in what was the enemy stronghold until literally an hour ago.

"It's all right," Leo explains as he starts setting up the beds. "The scar is how I earned his respect." Further confirmation that the Foot Clan does their recruiting at mental asylums.

The moment his bed is ready Donnie collapses with a groan, and Raph notices how the slight shaking that started in his hands on the way here has spread to his entire body. "You okay?" he asks, rubbing Donnie's shell and trying not to focus too hard on the glint of metal at its edges.

"C-cold," his brother forces out, teeth chattering. "The-the adrenaline's fa-fading away. The rob-robot was alwa-always at perfect tem-per-ature."

"I'll make some tea," Leo offers as Raph pulls a blanket over Donnie's shoulders. He heads over to the other side of the room and kneels before a little ceramic setup.

"D-do you think M-Mikey's okay?" Donnie asks while Raph rubs his back.

"He'll be fine," Raph says, praying it's true. "The little shit's not as dumb as he looks. He'll bunk down with Slash or something."

"Ouch, not so hard," Donnie mutters, twisting around. "Hey, what's that?"

Raph's so busy congratulating himself on driving off the chattering teeth it takes a second for him to notice what Donnie's looking at. There's a little book tucked in the corner of the room, pencil slung into its side.

Curious, Raph tugs it closer, expecting to see a copy of _The Art of_ _War_ or something. The book falls open in his hands, and his breath catches. "Raph?" Donnie asks, but his eyes are already being drawn to the page, too.

It's in English; with a scrawl that Raph would recognize as Leo's if it weren't so jagged and abrupt, so pierced with holes and dotted with tears.

_I'm going to kill him. I'm going to kill that fucking rat, I'm going to burn him the way he burned them. I hope Master Shredder lets me hurt him first. A beast like that doesn't deserve honor._

"Jesus," Raph breathes. The pages flutter under his fingers, almost of their own volition, snippets of writing blurring past.

_fucking bitch Karai_

_cut off his cock and shove it in his mouth_

_killed another Savate today_

_hang on him with his own tail_

_More bad dreams I think the rat's doing something_

_Turn him into a rug for Master_

He comes to a stop.

_Michelangelo was generous and funny and kind and I never paid enough attention to him Donatello was smart and caring and gentle and I asked too much for him Raphael was fierce and protective and resilient and I was too hard on him. They were all so good so brave and I couldn't protect them didn't deserve them it hurts so bad I want to die but dying is the coward's way out-_

"What are you doing?"

They glance up to see Leo staring at them, cup of tea in his hands.

"We didn't--"

"I'm sorry--"

"It opened--"

"Are you--"

"Tea," Leo barks, cutting them off as he holds out the cup. Donnie takes it while Leo grabs the book and stalks back to his little stove. They sit in silence, Donnie carefully sipping, as Leo rips off page after page, feeding them into the fire.

When he's done he heads back to them, face stony. Donnie sets the tea aside as he lays down and Leo gently pulls him into his lap, stroking his head. Raph sits against the wall and the silence stretches out, without even the _whirr_ of the burner to break it.

"Kitsune gave it to me," Leo says finally. "She said it'd be good to record my thoughts, to focus myself. I wrote in English just in case it was Karai's second language. Kitsune..." He shakes his head with another of those mirthless laughs. "She told me I should write about you guys, in case I forgot you. Probably just a sloppy attempt to collect intel."

He lets out a soft sigh, still stroking Donnie's head mechanically. "We were all crazy back then," he says quietly. "Especially me."

"No," Raph says firmly. "You were hurtin'. Stuff like that," he jerks his finger at the stove and its latest meal, "kept you together and it was shitty of us to to root through it."

"It doesn't matter now," Leo says, and Raph suddenly doesn't have the energy to tell him how obvious bullshit that is.

"Thank you for what you did," his brother continues. "In the hall, I mean."

"Not gonna lecture me on losin' control?" Raph says, sort of hoping Leo will do just that.

"Not tonight," Leo replies, and flicks out the switch. They automatically lie down on either side of their brother, wrapping their arms under his too-cool, too-thin, newly reborn body. Donnie clutches them gratefully, his heart thrumming a little before Raph resumes rubbing his back.

He thinks the conversation's over, but then Leo says. "I know why he left. Mikey."

Raph blinks. "We all know why he left. He couldn't take the blood an' bolted."

"No," Leo replies. "He was freaked out, yeah, but he didn't mention _leaving_ until Splinter took over the Foot Clan. Mikey, he...he's more black-and-white than _you_ , Raph, sometimes. To him the Foot are the bad guys and we're the good guys, and he didn't want to start mixing things like that. He was afraid of what would happen, what had already happened."

They're still chewing on that when Leo adds, "Maybe we should have gone with him."

"Seriously?" Donnie asks, and Raph feels his mouth drop open. Leo is _Splinter Junior_ , for crying out loud. Why would he even think of rebelling on that scale?

"People can change," Leo says quietly, his voice distant and a little dreamy. "This place...I've got so many memories of being some funhouse-mirror version of myself, and it turns out I never really left it behind. And tomorrow I'll have to start again, start fighting for the Foot again, kneeling to my master again."

"Splinter won't make us kneel," Donnie says quietly. Hopefully.

"And it'll be _different_ ," Raph promises. "We'll be with you."

"Until you're not," Leo says, that same dreamy tone hanging over his words. "Until I turn around and you're gone. This place...it's where I lost you. It's where I was destroyed and remade. I don't want that to happen to anyone else--not you, and not to Father."

"Don't be stupid," Raph says firmly. " _Nothin'_ can change Splinter, definitely not some stupid clan." He finds Leo's hand in the dark and squeezes tightly.

"And we'll never leave you," Donnie promises. "You know why? Because you _can_ protect us, just like we protect _you._ And...and you do deserve us."

"Mikey's gonna see that, too," Raph says. "He'll come back. It's all gonna be okay."

They go on like that, murmuring soft platitudes until Donnie drifts off to sleep. Leo follows soon after, and Raph already knows he won't mention of tonight's post-Shredder events tomorrow.

When Raph finally drifts off to sleep, he and his brothers are still squeezing onto each other for dear life, trying and failing to replace what they've lost. The last thing he remembers before it all disappears is an ugly little voice (perhaps a fox, perhaps not) wriggling up from his subconscious and whispering _Is everything so fine, why do you all feel like you're drowning?_


	20. Timeless

_How many times have we been through this?_

A girl wielding a (usually malfunctioning) time scepter stumbles into one universe or another, inevitably heading straight into the lives of one quartet of turtles or another. There's a time-and-space-hopping adventure, a bit of flirting on occasion, some of what modern scientists would refer to as historical inaccuracies, and a good deal of confusion before things are (more or less) straightened out.

The girl hops out of their lives for various other pursuits, to be scolded by her masters or to indulge in a whirlwind romance with a chronologically displaced beauty. For the most part, however, she finds herself stumbling into yet another adventure with yet another group of turtles, all over again.

Everything changes, in ways small or great, as endless loops cause the film to degrade and remake itself. The turtles change too: their appearances, their allies, sometimes even their personalities. At the core, however, the story is the same: four mutant brothers ~~hiding~~ living under New York City, trained in the art of ninjitsu by a mutated rat and doing their best to make their way in a big terrifying world.

 _Leonardo. Raphael. Donatello. Michelangelo._ On the worst days, she whispers their names like a prayer: _LeonardoRaphaelDonatelloMichelangelo._ Their friendship, their _existence_ keeps her grounded in the storm.

When the sheer devouring _size_ of the multiverse starts destroying her, carving bits of her soul and mind away, the names hold her together. She'll go off and have another adventure, kiss another Michelangelo perhaps, and her core personality remains intact.

The rest of her, though....

_How many times have we been through this?_

Renet stands before the mirror and rubs her face, watch wrinkles peel away at the touch. The face of a gawky young apprentice emerges from the Time Master's careworn skin, and with the skin goes her memories, her experience and skill.

Tomorrow or the next day, she'll wake up and she'll be an apprentice again. Her face will be a little different, along with the uniform laid out besides her bed--hell, sometimes she'll switch genders. Her dialect will sound different, with more or less slang on how her other Time Masters have also changed. Then, twenty or a thousand years (sort of) down the line, she'll go through the whole process again.

This is how she survives everything she's seen and done, the endless variety pressing down at her skull. Without it, she'd go mad, another crazy sorcerer tearing up reality while pursued by their former companions.

It happens to all the Time Masters, but Renet has it the hardest. Emotions weigh down at her, and the turtles who help keep her sane also make her much more vulnerable to the suffering of in-time civilizations than she should be. She spends more time in the "awkward" stage, and wreaks more havoc as a result. Not to mention her inability to stick with the various cycles of balanced and forgetting that everyone else uses to make sure there are always a few adult Time Masters around.

She's not sure why they keep her around, even if her mistakes are never made with malice. Perhaps her parents have pull? Renet doesn't quite remember who they are, although she knows they were people who wanted to make something of her.

So they sent her away to train, to learn how to breathe in the smell of extinct flowers and watch civilizations eat themselves. She'll never be sure if it's worth it.

"Why are there Time Masters?" she asked, once. "Why do we need to protect the time stream if most of the time it's being mucked up by one of her members or using our tech?"

"For the times it's not," someone said, and walked away before Renet asked why it was so bad for the time stream to be screwed up in the first place.

She forgot the conversation soon enough.

_How many times have we been through this?_

Renet lies strapped to a table, drifting on a cold cloud of sedatives. A superior sits by her bed, making notes. He's male, Renet's pretty sure everyone in her order was female at some point. Was there a war that changed things? she wonders. Or did it just happen without anyone noticing? She could ask the same about the Battle Nexus, she supposes.

"How many times have you killed him so far?" he asks. "Three? Four?"

Renet doesn't need to know how he's talking about. "You'd probably know more than me," she says.

He sighs, rubbing his head. "You can't keep jeopardizing the security of the space-time continuum for a few versions of a common criminal--"

"He's not _just_ a criminal," she shoots. "Not to them."

This particular version of the Shredder had ripped the turtle's father to pieces in front of them. Renet had been allowed to study their time stream for more than a brief mad glimpse for once, been able to see that he would have hunted them down and slaughtered them while they huddled, broken, in their home.

So she'd stolen sprung on him from the sky and run him through with her scepter, wearing his insides away into dust. She'd been given enough time to haul his body to the turtles (if they didn't dispose of him properly the old bastard might come back) and say goodbye, informing them that they'd never see her again.

They found her soon enough afterwards and hauled her away, back to the infirmary. The memory-wiping technology is mostly used for Time Masters who didn't shed their old selves fast enough, but sometimes it's needed to deal with witnesses...or discipline unruly officers.

Renet closes her eyes as the cool metal presses against her temples. She grits her teeth; the process doesn't physically hurt, but sometimes she'll get flashes of long-lost memory right before she slipped into the dark. Usually they were the kind of memories that almost make you grateful for the amnesia.

She falls asleep dreaming of melting words and shattered shells, and wakes up with no memories of what she's done. There's a hole in her mind, though, a quiet emptiness. She knows she's done something wrong, and she doesn't doubt that other things, softer memories, have been taken as well, as punishment for whatever she did.

But she gets back up and goes to work anyway, because as brutal as her masters could be she can't imagine any other life. And she can't give up her friends--none of them, in their beautiful green legions.

_How many times have we been through this?_

"My name's Renet!" she says, over and over again, until she's not sure whether she's telling them or reminding herself.

She learns to locate herself by the scars on their bodies, to distinguish the world of the Leo with the bad leg from that of the Donnie with the mechanical shell. She tries not to slip up, but it happens sometimes anyway.

"There's only one of me," she tells them, once. She doesn't go into the benefits of that, of all the wonders she'd seen and the horrors she'd witnessed, all the memories she'd lost to gain new ones, like jewels slipping through her fingers. Precious and worth it one moment, forgotten the next.

And she definitely doesn't tell them about all their many incarnations. She's met them as girls, as a quarter of lovers, as soldiers in an endless war, as the strangest things in their word, as shadows at the bottom of a superhero hierarchy. She's met them when they were abused or fiercely loved or both, she's known them coming out of every kind of relationship and had sex with a few versions of each.

 _You are endless_ , she could have told them. _Some of the masters call you an infection, a mold. I've always thought you were a garden._

She rarely dips into this subject matters, considering that usually they're busy making out or stopping the collapse of the space-time continuum. You know, kids' stuff.

_How many times have we been through this?_

Renet huddles in a dead village, the many vaccines pumped into her over the years working overtime to keep the plague out. She ignores the smell of corpses; she went her precisely because the Time Masters would search the least depressing places first.But this baby doesn't have to worry about being traumatized, it just have to worry about not being forcibly removed by the same forces that control its mother.

She rubs a powdered Time Crystal over her stomach and grits her teeth with effort, chanting a forbidden spell in her head. The baby grows at an incredibly fast pace, thriving off food Renet hasn't yet eaten, straining and kicking at a belly that throbs from having to grow so fast.

It's born within the hour, and Renet rocks it while singing pop songs, the only lullaby she knows. She cleans it off as best she can and returns to the father's universe before the Time Masters can figure out what she's done.

"I don't want her," she lies to a shocked Mikey, pushing the baby into his hands. She teleports away before he can utter a word, hoping that his brothers won't let him give their daughter a ridiculous name. Hoping that Mikey will tell her good stories about her mother, while still managing to hate Renet in his heart.

She runs and runs until the Time Masters find her. They strap down, and while the memories are draining away she realizes that she's given birth to several other children, scattered across the cosmos. She doesn't even know most of their names.

(She remembers the ones that were taken against her will, however, and the total wipe she was given after killing those responsible)

_How many times have we been through this?_

"You let him die," Michelangelo snarls, gun steady in his hand even as his voice shakes. "You didn't warn us, you didn't come help with that stupid fucking glowstick of yours, you didn't do _shit._ _Why did you let this happen?"_

"I..." She's standing there, wind blowing through her hair, helmet in her hands. "I didn't know."

"You didn't know? You _didn't fucking_ _know?"_ His words drips with scorn while tears glimmer in his eyes. "You're a fucking _Time Master,_ remember? Isn't time an ocean to you or whatever you Doctor Who knockoffs call it?"

And what she can say to that? _I forgot?_ Because she did forget, forgot in the slow drip of memories through her head, making way for the new ones. She forgot before she could warn them, somehow, the way she's forgotten so many things so many times.

Maybe it's the mindwipes that made her like this, or maybe she's just lethally forgetful. All she knows is that she's too late again. She could disappear in an instant, escape his wrath, but she doesn't want to.

"I'm sorry," she whispers.

He shoots her. She understands why.

The Time Masters find her in time, thanks to the armor and her slow-moving blood. They take her to the infirmary to fix her up, although this time the memory wipe is an option this time. This is a medical matter after all, not discipline.

She says no. She wants to remember the cost of forgetting for as long as she can.

_How many times have we been through this?_

An older version of April O'Neil finds her standing over graves in yet another universe and wants to know what she's doing. Renet lets the other woman read her mind, her eyes glowing in her careworn face.

April staggers, shocked by what she finds: a landscape that's at once carefully manicured and a hopelessly tangle, with old flowers rotting beneath the vines as new ones poke their tender or thorny (or both) heads out the muck.

Renet smiles with any mirth. " _Groovy,_ isn't it?"

They eat in one of the less bombed-out cafes and talk about the past, about the dead green boys who once grounded their lives. Renet tells this April more than she's ever told anyone, about memories that are stolen or simply fade away, about the shadows of lost children she glimpses in her dreams.

"So many turtles, so many Aprils and Caseys and Splinters, hell, even Shedders and Karais," she muses. "So many stories I've forgotten. And only one of me."

April cocks her head. "Do you...not want to live like this anymore?"

Renet understands what she's asking, and knows that if she agreed April could end her quickly and cleanly. Not even the Time Masters could reverse death.

But the finality of death is too droll for her tastes, so she just shakes her head and starts going on about some of the turtles' more memorable antics in this and other realities. Their laughter rings up through the night together, a brief light to glimmer among the starts before fading the next morning.

_How many times have we been through this?_

Do you know what it's like to fight for the fate of the world alongside an army of monsters, the abandoned and forgotten, and proudly count yourself as one of them? Renet does.

Do you know what it's like to know you can't destroy the forces that dominate you, not for lack of strength and aid, but if you did the cosmos you hated and loved would crumble? Renet does.

Do you know what it's like to see humanity follow the butterflies as they learned to walk? Do you know what it's like to see worlds burn up in their trapped gases? Renet does.

Do you know what it's like to compare the jewels of warrior queens to the glimmer of dewdrops in a spider's web, and realize that they are equal? Renet does.

Do you know what it's like to see every dream or nightmare that's ever been or will be had come to life? Renet does.

Do you know what it's like to traverse time not as a dream, but in its true form: an ocean of possibilities and change, wandering about in a half-mad daze until you bump into an island that always looks like a shell? Renet does.

Do you know what it's like to wonder if you're really mucking things up, or just trying to start another adventure? Renet does, as do her bosses, and she thinks the answer might chance from time to time.

Do you know what it's like to fall in and out of love with a turtle who wears orange in all his incarnations, to see him bleed and sob, to see him laugh and dance and love, and to know as you watch him that you'll never raises above your emotions the way your teachers wish you could? Renet does.

Do you know what it's like that you lose so many memories, but not everything, not the most important ones? Do you know what it's like to nevertheless wonder if the ones you've gained are equal to the ones you've lost or been robbed of?

Do you know what it's like to find yourself alongside a rainbow-banded pack of outsiders, to forget your forgetting in a whirl of merry hijinks at the side? Do you know what it's like to thank them for helping fix the latest kerfuffle, when you're really thanking them for keeping you sane? Renet does.

Do you know what it's like to understand these are the only things you'll remember forever, and decide that it's enough, that the new adventures are worth the suffering and sorrow they're mixed with? Renet does.

_How many times have we been through this?_

Not nearly enough, not yet.


	21. Unbroken

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sequel to ABC TMNT III's "Underwater."

It starts a few weeks after they get back from Northampton. Leo has every cliched symptom in the book--nausea, irritability, stranger hungers combined with even stranger repulsions. He tells himself it's a stomach bug for as long as he can, and then he stops thinking about why he's feeling what he's feeling in order to focus on keeping his family from getting suspicious.

A month in come the aches and the pains, keeping him up at night. When he does sleep his dreams are worse than ever before, and they've been terrible for a long time. Lying on his stomach is the worse.

"You using a new deodorant, Leo?" Raph asks at dinner. "You smell funny." Leo tries to get through the meal as quickly as possible, claiming to be full even though his stomach is still rumbling for more. Afterward he lies in bed, rubbing his plastron and wondering if it always felt so...taut.

The Rat King visits him once, face twisted with vicious mockery. "Oh, my sister will be _jealous,"_ he croons, running his hand along Leo's stomach before he has the chance to twist free. "What will you name them?"

 _"Liar,"_ Leo snarls and summons a burst of blue flame to send him away. He wakes up quietly sobbing, hugging himself. His legs are tightly wrapped together the way they usually are when he sleeps these days, although he can still feel hands peeling them apart.

He stands in the bathroom, the taste of vomit still bitter in his mouth, and looks in the mirror. He runs his hands over his sides and plastron, telling himself he doesn't know what he's looking., telling himself it's ridiculous.

He doesn't think about how five dead people from ancient Japan being reborn in the bodies of mutant animals is just as ridiculous. He doesn't think about what Donnie said once, that the reproductive capability of the mutant body is a completely unknown factor.

~~He doesn't think of hands on his shell and running along his tail, kneeling between his master's spread legs, a voice calling him Yoshi as he stares at the bedroom ceiling.~~

He doesn't think about that, no siree.

These non-thoughts aren't what send him running back to the toilet to through up blood and air, though. It's the shape of small, hard, round lumps around his probing fingers.

If he's lucky, it's cancer. He's not feeling lucky.

Not for the first time, Leo finds himself sitting on his bed with a knife in hand, thinking about death. He comes up with the same reasons he usually has--his brothers need him to keep them safe, he won't give Shredder and Kitsune the satisfaction, he doesn't want to spend eternity with his mother's disappointment (Mother, Mother, why couldn't you reach me in time? Why couldn't you help?)

Alopex knows about what Shredder did, but she doesn't know about what might be growing inside Leo. One painful memory dump was agonizing enough for both of them, and she's got her own problems. (He swings between being furious at the universe for making _him_ be the one with the baby, and hating himself for wishing this on her).

Mentioning this to his brothers is not an option. Donnie would see him as a science experiment, something to study and pity rather than follow. Mikey would probably beg him to keep it. Raph.... _Father...._ Leo didn't want to think about that.

He's the Fearless Leader, the one who always knew what to do next, the one who could solve every problem. Except for the times when he doesn't have a fucking clue, like now.

So he waits, and he pukes, and he prays his teeth won't decay from all the stomach acid, and he somehow finds time to go to the bathroom. and he grits his teeth through the hunger and pain. He doesn't think about why this is happening to him, except for the times when it's all he can think and he has to sob in the shadows of his room.

He studies his belly obsessively, and thinks it might be getting a little bigger. Just a little, but touching himself still makes him feel nauseous. God, he misses his human old body _so much,_ the one he only remembers in dreams that are much saner than his reality.

Leo faces Shredder and neither mentions what passed between them. Saki doesn't brag about the time he made Leo into his sex toy, and Leo doesn't call him out as the vicious rapist he is. He supposes they both missed opportunities.

Leo's stomach throbs as he crashes to his knees and prays to his mother's ghost that he won't miscarry here, won't have to explain this to his father and his brothers and the Foot Clan and fucking _Karai._ But the eggs stay inside him as he watches his father kill a monster with Leo's blade; the scent of Saki's blood is one of the sweetest things Leo has ever encountered.

Then he has to go back to the Foot headquarters, to the place where he was raped and abused and turned into a killer. He has to walk with demons on his shell and a monster's voice hissing in his ears, low and vicious.

He lies on his mat with his legs tightly folded, even though he can still feel the Shredder inside him. Leo hits his belly rhythmically, gritting his teeth through every flare of pain, but to no avail.

He looks at his father on the throne and wants to scream _Shredder fucked me on that throne. I chopped off a man's head right over there, where Raph's falling asleep. Why can't we burn this_ _place to the ground and start again?_ He doubts that his father would have remodeled even if he knew what had happened here. Splinter has always cared too much for history, for better or worse.

Leo loves his father, and the destruction of their family is one of the worst things he's experienced. But...but he's relieved to get out of the Foot Clan, to sleep in his own bed. He still wakes up crying quietly, of course, but at least his heart doesn't stop when he remembers where he is.

Now all he has to do is take care of three brothers, cope with the fact that the United States Government wants their heads on spikes, deal with whatever the fuck the Mutanimals are up to now, keep the puking and pissing a secret, and confront the fact that his stomach, while still not visibly swollen, is still feeling very full and stiff.

There's no breaking water when the time comes, just a rattling behind his ribcage and a deep instinctive urge to _go go go._ He somehow gets out of the lair without tripping over his own feet and causing a scene, muttering something about going for a run before he vanishes into the lair.

 _Dig dig dig_ his body screams, but it's all stone and water up here so he has to climb, grunting and cursing, and dart through the streets. He runs with his hands clasped over his belly, panting and vulnerable. Would it be worse to be found by his enemies or his friends at this point?

He winds up in Central Park, stumbling into a shady hollow that smells like it's been used as a toilet and possibly for masturbation, but does not actually contain anyone. He collapses to his knees, scrabbling at the ground, silently weeping with desperation and humiliation.

 _Good on your knees_ , Shredder had said once, one of the few times he'd been talking to Leo and not Yoshi. He throws up in a nearby bush at the memory as a hole forms beneath his fingers.

After a bit of confused flipping around, he decides to squat, and the first egg starts to come through. Which is when it really starts to hurt.

He muffles a scream in his arm, mouth filling with blood and cloth and scale. His free hand skitters across the earth, trying to ground itself, only to be clasped by something soft and strong. His heart nearly stops before Tang Shen whispers, "Shhh, my son. I am here."

Leo can see her at the corner of his eye, a swirl of dark hair and golden light. He doesn't know whether to break down sobbing with gratitude or scream at her for not appearing before, but it doesn't matter because all he can do is groan anyway.

She talks him through the birth, telling him when to breathe and when to release, when to push. Leo has no idea if any of the techniques employed by human females would work on him, but his internal organs aren't melting and he can't think of anything else to do so he decides to stick with it.

"I'm so proud of you," she whispers as the first egg drops into the pit with a _thump._ "You're doing so well." Her hand caresses his face and he wonders who did this for her when he was born, all those centuries ago. He doesn't wonder if she was terrified, because what else could you feel right now except terror?

She talks, her voice soothing and regular as a metronome. Leo sobs for air and with tears as he tries to stay sane, tries to _breathe_. The eggs pile up between his legs.

"One more," Tang Shen promises, stroking his sweaty forehead. "You're so close, my love." He doesn't know if this is true or if she's just saying this because he started begging for it to stop at some point, but he keeps on. He _breathes_.

And then he hears voices joining his mother's. Distant voices, but getting closer, and closer. Voices undoubtably coming to check out whoever is losing their shit and crossing the miracle of life with an impromptu seance at this hour.

 _No no no._ Stupid fucking idiot why didn't he plan better oh that's right he couldn't face up to any of this, fuck fuck _fuck._ He lets out a scream of effort and pushes harder than ever before, needing the egg to get out of him _now_.

"Breathe, Leonardo," his mother says, somehow taking deep breaths even though she's been dead for three hundred years. But the egg...oh shit is it _stuck_ don't let it be stuck. He lets out a muffled shriek of frustration, legs shaking so badly that he thinks they might fall off.

"Almost there." He has an urge to ask his mother if she's disappointed to not be helping a daughter through this instead of a son. It's the kind of ridiculous thing to say in a ridiculous situation like this and fuck is that hysterical laughter babbling out of his throat?

_Where do little eggs come from? Why, warlord's cocks and ground-up rocks and the puppet strings of a fox._

The last egg emerges and shatters when it hits the others, the smell of decay and death filling the air. He can glimpse pale white flesh and half-formed shell inside, too small to be called a child.

 _Last one out is a rotten egg,_ he thinks, and hears himself laugh as he curls up on the ground, hysterical giggles mixing with sobs. His mother strokes his shell, telling him how well he did, as the laughter melts into full-on weeping.

"Leo?"

It's Raph. Raph is standing there, and Casey is standing next to him, and judging by their postures they're both about to keel over from shock.

 _"Fuck,"_ Leo says, and passes out.

"Leo? Leo, it's okay...."

Someone is kneeling in front of him, talking, their face shifting in and out of focus. "It's okay," Raph repeats, stroking his head.

Leo flinches away from the touch, eyes wild with panic. He deserves whatever Raph has to give, he knows he does, he shouldn't be panicking but _he doesn't want to die_ and the notion is as shocking as it is inescapable.

"It's okay," Raph repeats, raising his hands. "It's okay, I'm not going to hurt you. I'm not going to hurt..." his eyes shift to the little hole, "....them."

 _Them_. Leo's gorge rises at the idea. He glances down at the white shapes in his ridiculous little pit, piled on top of each other. His eyes shift to Casey, still standing above the hollow, bat hanging loosely in his hand. What does he think about this freak show?

"What do you want to do about them?" Raph asks, as Leo glances back down at the pit. His brother sounds so calm, which means he's either still in shock or preparing to explode as soon as they don't have an audience.

Leo clears his throat, still sore from the laughter and the crying. "Get rid of them."

A pause. Raph shuffles besides him, running his finger over the eggs. "What if they're alive?" he asks.

"I'm aborting them," Leo says firmly. He doesn't want to raise a child in this ugly world, not now, maybe not ever. He certainly doesn't want to raise Saki's children, to look into their dark eyes and think of the man who'd turned him into a living sex doll and left him to shatter in the aftermath.

Maybe a stronger person could find the strength to love them. But Leo isn't feeling very strong right now--and besides, he already has people to raise and protect _(if they'll have him, if they won't throw him out on the street like the freakish slut he is)._

"Okay," is all Raph says. Leo moves aside as he scoops up the eggs and carries them over to Casey. "You got that?" he asks, pressing them into the other boy's arms.

"Yeah...." Casey's voice sounds distant and dreamy as he gathers the eggs into his shirt.

"Thanks." There's a pause before Raph says, "You're my best friend, but if you tell anyone about this I'll kill you. Got that?"

"Yeah," Casey seems more grounded by that, for some reason. He walks off with Leo's eggs in his arms, to go find a secluded alley and go to work with his bat. If the universe is feeling particularly ironic, perhaps he'll end up doing it behind an abortion clinic.

Raph kneels besides him and Leo stares at his hands, waiting for the screaming and recrimination. Raph's certainly blown up over much less; no doubt he's feeling betrayed and hurt on top of the absolute disgust.

But instead all his brother says is, "You okay?"

Leo glances up with him, not bothering to hide his shock.

Raph seems to misinterpret that. "I mean, you're obviously not _okay,_ but are you bleeding or anything? Do I have ta call Donnie?"

The world tilts under him. " _No!_ No, don't call Donnie, I'm..." He sucks in a breath. "I'm good, I'm not bleeding." _Mother talked me through it_ , he could say, but he doesn't want to sound crazy on top of being a traitor.

There's a few more seconds of silence. Still no screaming, still no violence, still _nothing_ like what he expected from Raph. Finally his brother asks, "What happened?"

"Saki." And maybe it's how very tired he feels, maybe it's wanting to piss Raph off enough that he'll explode and get this over with, maybe it's just the monster's name, but Leo spills _everything_.

He tells Raph about the brainwashing, about the desperate need to please Splinter being switched to a desperate need to please Saki. He tells him about all the people he hurt and killed, about his petty rivalry with Karai. He talks about the first time, how terrified he was then--and every time after--but still desperate to not be thrown back to the rat, and to show his master how much he loved him.

Leo talks about the throne room, the bedroom, the shower. He talks about all the tricks he learned, about being unceremoniously sent out afterwards, about watching Kitsune with Shredder and wondering if she knew (or cared), about being called "Yoshi" over and over again. He mentions Alopex, pointing out again that she was unwilling as he was; Raph tenses at the words, but says nothing.

He talks about the aftermath, about feeling shattered and broken at the end of a fall he couldn't even remember. He talks about almost drowning himself in the river before changing his mind at the last minute, about how he still thinks about it at times.

He talks about the pregnancy, the sickness, the fear. He even mentions Tang Shen's help, eventually. He talks about the helpless terror of being drowned in his instincts, of digging and squatting like a beast.

Raph doesn't tell him to shut the fuck up and stop being sorry for himself. He doesn't draw his sai, although their gleam shimmers haunting at the corner of Leo's eye. He just sits there, quiet and still as a stone. It's actually fucking creepy, but Leo's too busy sobbing as he talks by this point to care.

When he's done, there's a few seconds where his brother just sits and stares into space. Then he gets and punches a tree once, twice, three times. Leo jumps each time, the vibrations rattling through his bones and tender stomach.

Around the fifth or sixth time, the tree falls with an earthshaking _crash._ Leo stiffens, glancing around, but the homeless people know better to interfere and any cops around are either busy or possibly unconscious.

Raph plops down besides him, studying his bloody knuckles. Leo stares at them, remembering all the times they've landed on his face. If Raph goes for the stomach right now, it's over.

Then his brother says, "I used ta hook on the streets."

Leo's mouth drops open, and he doesn't bother hiding it.

"I was starving," Raph says, not bothering to hide the bitterness in his voice. "Didn't know to steal ninja-style, definitely didn't have a friendly pizza guy to keep me fed. Most of the manhole covers were screwed shut, especially since you guys hadn't been moving around as much back then--not that it was your fault," he adds quickly, in a way wholly unlike Raph.

"Most people I met were scared of me, of course, so it wasn't like I could get a normal job. But sometimes...there'd be people who were _interested_ in the really freaky shit, wanted to see how it worked. No grass on the infield, y'know. So I'd go home with them, get a meal and a bed, _perform_ , let them do all the vanilla or kinky stuff they wanted. Anything to stay safe, right?"

Right. Leo remembers how the pain and humiliation of what his master expected from him came with such a sense of _security_ , stronger and more alluring than any sense of physical pleasure. Saki's....attentions meant that he was needed, that he was _useful_ , that he wouldn't fail like he had with his brothers or be replaced like Karai. The feeling had only lasted until the next grieving, shameful breakdown in the shower, but it had kept him from running away.

"Sometimes they'd hurt me, tell me what a needly little monster I was. Sometimes they'd tell me how _interesting_ I was, how _beautiful._ Sometimes they did both. I hated them all the same. And I kept going back, 'cause I didn't have a choice. Like you." Raph is staring straight ahead, tears glimmering in his eyes.

 _Like you._ He's not mad, he's not mad, and Leo barely has time to be relieved because he's just figured out that he's not the only in this family who's experienced these horrors. He failed to keep his brother safe in the biggest way possible.

"I...I was luckier n' you. It took months before..." He pats his stomach and Leo's mouth goes dry. "One of my "customers" got really fixatd on me, wanted to keep me around. So he chained me up in his basement, half-starved me so I couldn't fight, brought me out for parties an' shit. I don't know how long I was down there, but it felt like an eternity. I went a little crazy, I think. But I had to _keep quiet_ , because if people found me they'd just take me back to the labs."

He lets out a sigh, winding his fingers together and pulling taut. "Everything I ate went to the stupid eggs, I think. I was almost dead by the time they arrived. There...was a woman with me, helping me, and for a long time I thought I was nuts, that I'd dreamed her up."

If he listens, Leo thinks he can hear Tang Shen crying in the distance, weeping for all three of them.

"When they were born, I..." He rubs his head. "I was so fuckin' _hungry,_ Leo, you can't imagine." His eyes shift to the hole, dark and all-devouring. "I can remember what they tasted like, but I can't describe it.

"I used the shards to pick the locks, somehow. Then I went upstairs and found a knife. I killed him, and then I threw up in his living room, and then I ate his dinner. I stayed there until his work started calling him, and then I left. I...I hadn't gotten desperate enough to go with anyone again before you found me. I was so scared about what you do, what you wanted, for so long."

More silence. Leo wonders if Casey's completed his task yet, wonders what the stains on his bat look like. Raph's crying quietly, tears puddling in the dirt.

"I know what it's like to hate yourself," he says eventually. "I know what it's like to be scared that everyone will hate you. I know what it's like to feel like a slut, feel _dirty._ I know what it's like to think you're an abomination among abominations, and..." He shrugs. "Now I know what it's like to hate yourself for being glad that there's someone out there as fucked-up as you."

"I'm sorry," Leo says, looking up at the trees. Sorry this happened to Raph, sorry this happened to him, sorry that neither of them felt ready to be father-mothers.

"Yeah, well, I'm sorry we didn't get to kill Saki a couple thousand more times." Raph slumps back on his shell with his groan, peering up at the trees. "And I'm sorry I didn't follow up on what I, uh, smelled. It was familiar, but I didn't want to think about it."

"Neither did I," Leo admits.

Raph's phone rings with a text, and he takes it out. "Casey wants to say that it's, uh, done."

"Okay," Leo says, wiggling his toes in the dirt. He reaches forward and starts filling up the hole, smoothing away the physical evidence of what's happened in a way he can't do for his own memories.

"I'm so tired," he says, brushing the dirt off his hands. "So tired of living like this, so tired of being _broken."_

"You're not broken," Raph says firmly. "I thought I was for a long time, but you guys...Alopex...Angel...Casey...you helped me see otherwise. Fucked up, yeah, probably for good, but not broken."

He reaches out and squeezes Leo's hand. "I love you," he whispers. "I don't say it often enough, but I do. You helped me, even if you didn't realize it, and I'm gonna help you."

"I love you, too," Leo murmurs, not knowing what else to say. He feels Tang Shen brushing her lips along their temples, a declaration of her own love, of her faith in them and their ability to survive. He squeezes back and feels a burden slip from his shoulders. It's replaced by another one, the burden of his brother's story, but it's lighter than the last one and he knows he'll be able to bear it.

He sits there with his brother as the city emerges from its fitful sleep into a new day, whatever that brings.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No, I don't know what all the "U" stories in my ABC Anthology have dealt with Leo being almost or actually raped.


	22. Visual

Ninja were not meant to be seen--it had been drilled into them since before they could walk. More importantly, mutants _could not_ be seen if they were to survive. They understood that rule, and for the most part they didn't really mind. It was all they had ever known, after all.

Sometimes, well....they had done incredible things in their underground world, and it rankled that few people would ever acknowledge it. It was Mikey who first followed this train of thought to its logical conclusion:

Just because the city could never see them, it didn't mean they couldn't see what they left behind.

He started small, with aerosol cans tossed into the trash by fleeing vandals. He planted little roses and lilies in the nooks and crannies of New York, splashed birds and butterflies and fierce bright dragons across the alley walls.

Mikey liked the idea of someone walking by at night, glimpsing his pictures, and maybe smiling at the sight. If they only inspired a single smile before they were washed off or painted over, he thought it might be worth the effort.

After Leo almost dies in the Technodrome, Mikey leaves lightning bolts for every night with a nightmare. After April leaves, he paints big tears here and there. After the Squirrelanoids he makes tornados and colorful swirls of wind, trying to wipe the crushing sense of water out of his lungs. He paints big, bright swirls of smiling suns and psychedelic angels, mixed with representations of the big bright mass of humanity he's glimpsed through the grates.

Casey, who's been doing this for years, manages to hook Raph on the vandalism bug just as he did the vigilante one. They post skulls, crossbones, gory battle art, threats against bad guys, scenes of carnage and mayhem.

Sometimes they find themselves doing "sappier" stuff, too: Casey quietly begs passerby to remember their own value, while Raph posts pleas for Spike to come home or careful reproductions of the animals he's read about and might want to see, one day.

At the farmhouse there are no city walls to graffiti. When beating the shit out of each other during training doesn't help with the pent-up emotions, Raph and Casey sneak out and haunt abandoned buildings in the nearby town, probably confusing the shit out of the residents. Mikey finds out and blackmails them into letting him come with; he paints the images of happy, healthy family on the concrete of the school playground nearby like prayers.

They get caught repeatedly, of course, and are yelled at, of course, and steal back their supplies, of course. When Leo wakes up, he decides to solve the problem by putting glue on the art supplies, and is usually woken by the sounds of cursing.

Back in the city, Mikey posts messages begging Karai to come home to the family who loves her. He recruits Leo to repeat the messages in Japanese, pointing out his skill with kanji until his ego wins out over his fear of being seen.

On occasion Leo will slip out on his own, adding more messages to Karai or simply writing things for himself. He writes _I am alive_ and _we endure_ in kanji, speaking not to the city at large, but to any passing Foot soldiers--or to himself, reminding himself still here when the memory of vicious cold sinks into his bones.

After the brainworm, Casey silently follows Raph through the city as he paints bullet holes and bleeding wounds on the concrete. The city bleeds for him, crumbles when he can't.

Eventually, Karai manages to leave messages for them. _I love you, I'm safe, I'm sorry, I'll see you again._ She and Leo meet once, swords and aerosol cans in hand, and they share a few hours together before she leaves for Japan. Leo paints a heart on that spot, red and bright as blood.

When they come back from space, they're all desperate to cope. Mikey finds himself wandering the city streets, putting down images of the end of the world and the terrifying, wonderful, adventures that were necessary to save it. He doesn't paint himself and his brothers, but he paints the planets, the ships, the civilizations....the violence, the destruction, the war. The people of New York deserve a chance to see what was down for them, even they'll never believe they're real.

He recruits the others to help him, to add their memories to his. Donnie is dragged out the most thanks to his flawless memory for detail, and, like Leo, it's enough to start him on leaving his own marks.

He paints images of his inventions (not the diagrams or equations, of course, not without patents) of the machines and chemical masterpieces he's worked so hard. It's recognition of a sort (he's more satisfied by discussing machines online) but he likes the idea of someone glimpsing a thing he's made and being able to wonder at it without him being expected to use it on them.

After Karai returns, she, Leo, and Shinigami will scatter threats of death and war across the city, grim images for a grim task. _We are everywhere_ , the knives and skulls and Hamato sigils say. _We are the shadow at the back, the_ _demons in the dark, and our coming is inevitable._

April doesn't really get into the drawing until the aftermath of Za-Naron, when she wanders the city streets in a daze, turning around whenever she feels a potential acquaintance coming near. The brick crumbles beneath her fingers as she carves declarations of guilt and grief and madness into the stone, occasionally filling them with her blood, the only confession she'll ever be able to make to the city and the world.

As she gets a little better she makes sure to track the marks down and wipe them away--not for the benefit of the city, but so her friends don't have to worry. Later, after she returns, Raph shows how to carve her anger with red and silver, while Mikey teaches her how to imagine happier futures of Technicolor memorials.

When the government almost kills Mikey he and Casey break into the United Nations and paint a declaration of outrage on the building's front wall. _We are not animals,_ they announce in neon green, and let the people of New York make of that what they will. Leo shouts at them for the risk and then quietly asks Mikey if he's doing alright, before letting his little brother break down in his arms.

After Splinter dies the turtles paint themselves instead of the city, donning black like that'll somehow provide extra protection from the monster chasing them down. They face him, they kill him, Leo breaks down screaming afterwards. They scrub him off in the tub, washing black paint and green blood off as he shakes and shudders in their arms.

One night, they gather to paint a mural of Splinter meditating in the dojo, face somber and composed. It's the compilation of all their combined practice with street art, and it comes off as pretty decent. Leo paints Hamato Yoshi's name in kanji at the top, glowing fiercely in the lantern light.

It's the closest any of them can come to signing their work. What they paint has to be bright and brief; even individualized tags risk drawing too much attention. The people of New York will occasionally catch glimpses of their thoughts and experiences, and these will disappear and be forgotten eventually.

But the very act of creation means you are _alive_ to create, means you have done things that are worth sharing by the simple face that you want to share them. And nothing can take that away from them, or keep them from being a part of the strange, wonderful visual world that lurks at the edge of New York's consciousness.

So they keep going out, this peculiar little collection of broken shadows, and turn their hurts and hopes into fluorescent rainbow footprints on New York's skin.


	23. Wounds

Raph is the night's first casualty.

The Shredder raises him high and his brothers make the same unholy sound April remembers from her nightmares. She raises her hands, trying to pull him free, but she can't-- _weak, too weak_ _ever Za-Naron--_ all she can do is slow the blinding speed of his descent a little. His shell _cracks_ when he hits ground and Casey throws up at the noise.

Mikey lets out a wail as he slices through the bone covering Shredder's face, sending bright green blood pumping everywhere. April hurls her Tessen at the hole in his head and Shredder bats it away almost casually while the other hand slices through Mikey's arm, triggering a crimson spray and an earsplitting shriek.

Donnie snatches Mikey up in his arms and races away from the fight. "Give me your fucking Taser!" he screams to Casey, who dashes after him as April and Leo charge into battle with twin war cries.

They whirl about the roof, blades clashing and spinning. From behind her April can hear the newly altered Taser activating, followed by a sickening scream and the smell of Mikey's burning flesh; she'd hurl if she had the breath.

She wants to howl with frustration because as battle-hardened and skilled and desperate as they are, Shredder's just _too fast_ , even with his arm missing and a ruin for a face and oh fuck are those new blades emerging from his stump?

April tries to yank his legs out from under him with her mind and he just whirls into a kick that slams into her chest. She barely manages to cushion the blow in time as she flies on the roof, gasping as the concrete tears through her skin with the brutal landing.

She squints through a haze of fire and pain as Leo and Shredder skip and dart across the roof. Leo slams his sword into his opponent's stomach, a blow that should kill any human or mutant. And Shredder can't be either, because he simply draws back his foot and slams it directly into Leo's bad knee.

Leo howls, crumpling, and Shredder stomps _again_ and _again,_ laughing like he's fucking enjoying this, and April can't breathe, the hate and horror and pain of everyone on the roof is burning through her skull.

"STOP IT!" Donnie screams, bursting through the fire. He throws his naginata, and it goes right fucking _through_ Shredder, sticking out the other end. He sways, but doesn't make a sound, ripping the weapon out without looking as he prepares to bring his claws down on Leo's head.

"Get the _fuck_ away from him," April hisses, slamming her foot into Shredder's side. The blow that felled Tiger Claw barely seems to faze him as April tumbles to the ground and rolls to her feet, hearing Donnie drag Leo away behind her. Her tanto screams off Shredder's claws once, twice, three times and then he slices her hilt in half.

His claws swing, not for her, but for Donnie at her side, too-small knives from his wrappings in his hands. He misses Donnie's head, but his claws tear through the purple bandanna and across his face, sending blood flowing like tears. Donnie falls with a scream, and April doesn't have the time to register her horror before she's reaching out again, catch ingShredder in midair.

She growls with effort, pouring every once of her will into holding him back. His claws freeze--twist--they both scream in frustration--then he's tearing free and slashing at her stomach--

Casey knocks her aside and the claws sink into his chest, sprouting out the other end like a hellish parody of angel wings. Shredder rips her free and Casey falls into her arms, eyes big as his insides try to make their way outside and April tries to push them back.

April looks into Shredder's eyes and sees nothing remotely sane in them, just a festering green pit of madness. "Why?" she breathes. _How did you fall so far? How does anyone become this big a monster in real life?_

His claws tear across her throat.

Or they try to, but they don't reach deep enough and before he can come around with another blow he's flying across the rooftop. From a distance April sees herself pressing one hand to her throat and the other to Casey's chest, trying to hold them together with her powers, Donnie's screaming and Leo's whimpering echoing like cannon fire through the air.

They're going to die here. They're going to die die die, after everything they're been through, after they've saved the fucking _world._ They're going to die, they're going to die.

"April."

She glances up. Two women are standing there, blond and black hair flowing in the wind. Tang Shen and Elizabeth O'Neil, looking down at her.

 _Mom,_ she says, or tries to, but her throat spasms uselessly and painfully under her fingers.

"He's injured." Elizabeth says firmly. April glances through them and sees that Shredder is, in fact, swaying as he approaches them. "He's strong, but he's taken a hell of a beating tonight.

"You have all the weapons you need," Tang Shen adds, gesturing down at the roof.

"One more push, my love," Elizabeth whispers, tears glittering in her eyes. "I am so proud of you, baby."

Then they're gone, and Shredder's standing there, claws sparkling red as green sloughs off his body like a demented Christmas tree. "This has been an interesting challenge, abomination," he says, apparently not noticing the total hypocrisy of that statement. "I will remember you in my coming reign."

A Tessen, a tanto, a spiked glove, two swords, two sai, two kusarigama, and one naginata come soaring across the rooftop. They slice through all the holes in his armor, tear through his body, carve him up into pieces before he even has a chance to rip them out.

The Shredder collapses in a heap of limbs and guts, still twitching for a few seconds before finally going still.

Finally, the Shredder is dead. And April and the people she loves are left broken in his wake.

_Donnie._

His mind is a screaming mass of horror and loss and _no no no no._ April suspects she'll be the same later, but right now she's running on autopilot, too busy keeping them alive to breakdown. Leo is the same--she can hear him speaking on the phone, hissing to whoever's on the other end between pained breaths.

_Donnie, I need you to help me._

"Help you?" His head shoots up, ruined face peering somewhere to her left. She wonders if the world looks red or black to him. "Are you _shitting_ me? I can't--"

 _See through my_ eyes, she says forcefully, pushing their connections far as it can go. _Reach for me, Donnie._ And he does, mental fingers clinging to each other for dear life. There is a buzzing in her head, a blur of unfamiliar memories flickering through her mind, and then Donnie's saying, "Oh--oh _shit_ , Casey, April, your throat--"

_Focus, Donnie._

"Right, yeah." He scrambles over to her, moving with impossible grace for someone who literally has no eyes to speak of. He snatches a t-phone from his pocket and holds it until her neck is properly reflected. She understands and lets go of her throat to hold it while his hands dart to her neck--an awkward position, but they make it work. She forces her not to look away Donnie walks with surgical tape and thread, limbs shaking as she pours her remaining power into Casey's quivering guts.

Donnie finishes with her neck without telling her how bad it is, and April doesn't have the strength to ask. He puts the phone away and they're both trying to make something out of Casey's guts when the Mutanimals arrives, loping over the rooftops. Leo's passed out by the time they arrive, the phone limp in his hands.

"You need to carry all three us back to the Shell Raiser, together," Donnie barks, shifting into his doctor voice while they're still gaping at everybody's wounds. "April, can you keep him perfectly steady?"

She can. She's barely conscious by the time they reach the van, but she manages it. Donnie pricks her with an adrenaline shot and she gasps awake, biting her lip hard to mix her concentration and keep her gaze locked on whatever Donnie needs to look at. Donnie barks orders about Raph's condition to Rockwell, and for once the monkey does what he's told without question, hands flying over Raph's limp form.

They squeal away into the night with Mondo pale at the wheel, and April suspects that even the battle is won, a new war is about to begin.

The next hours...days?...are a blur of blood-streaked motion and frantic noise. The shock runs out and the pain from April's throat lances across the connection she's formed with Donnie, thankfully before he's actually put the scalpel into Casey. Someone shoves pills down her throat and she's left somewhere between the haze of painkillers and the burn of adrenaline, ordering herself to focus, focus, on the turtle in front of her.

All of their patients wake up screaming at least once. Raph's head and shoulders are propped up by his own gear until they're able to switch it out with pillows; his upper half twitches and groans while his lower remains still. Mikey's arm is a burned stump from when Donnie had to cauterize it, and after Casey is finally _(finally)_ something resembling stable they have to cut even more of the ruin off. 

They nearly lose Casey once, April swears she can _feel_ his life slipping through her fingers. She snarls a mental command for a sick-looking Mondo to be at her side at all times, dabbing tears away with a handkerchief, keeping her eyes (Donnie's eyes) clear. Someone somewhere calls Shini and she's there too, pressing pads to Donnie's bloody eyes.

Leo drifts on a haze of morphine in the background, mumbling to himself. They have to wait until the more pressing cases are taken care of to fix his leg, and by that time it's already started to heal wrong, so Donnie has to rebreak it. He cries out for his father as his brother works, but if Master Splinter's ghost deigns to make an appearance April can't see it.

Eventually, April finds herself slumped in the Pit with Donnie curled up besides her, so tired they can't think, their mushy minds flowing into each other across the link. Shini tugs a blanket over them and they're left to huddle there, shaking.

They think they hear Shini talking to Alopex on the phone, telling her that Tiger Claw needs to disposed of before the surviving Foot figure out how vulnerable the Hamato Clan is. They don't really care to listen at this point.

April wakes up and tries to call out to someone, ask what time it is. The ruined mess of her throat doesn't respond.

She screams in the only way she knows how--peering wooden slats off the walls and burying them in the floor, then ripping out and ripping them to crumbs. For a while she just sits there in a puddle of sawdust, until she hears Donnie wake up and start screaming.

April returns to him and and they hold each other. Donnie makes the sobs she can't, and April sheds the tears he can't. They hear their family members and the Mutanimals waking up, opening their eyes on this broken world.

Here are the facts: 

April O'Neil's vocal cords have sustained permanent damage. When she returns to her father and says _Hello_ in a voice projected inside his head, an ugly red necklace at her throat, he passes out and April finds herself wishing she'd brought some of Raph's booze.

Casey Jones is outwardly the least damaged of the group, although he will be in recovery for months and his fighting and hockey skills will be limited for the rest of his life. He's dropped off at the hospital due to the Lair's strained resources and also so his family can figure out where the hell he is, with Karai putting pressure on the cops so nobody asks too many awkward questions.

Leonardo Hamato's leg can carry his weight at times, although the mantras necessary to maintain it at that level will eventually leave him too exhausted to walk. It will never function like a proper leg again, or even if imitation of one the way it did after his coma. This fact can cause him to break down in tears at random moments.

Raphael Hamato is paralyzed from the waist down; there are several deep cracks in his shell and more in his plastron. He's made various requests for weapons, booze, or a lethal dose of sleeping pills to be brought to his bedside, and is ignored.

Donatello Hamato has no physically functioning eyes, except for April. He has to be warned every time she showers, changes, or goes to the bathroom (for now) in order to cope with the sudden darkness. She decides to move into the lair, both to help him see and because her interest in school and college has sort of folded in on itself now that she can longer speak without telepathic assistance.

(Kirby is furious at her for that, for getting herself in the first place, but she's eighteen now and able to make her own decision. He understands that, deep down, but he still finds himself weeping about all the horrors that have haunted their lives, and April holds him tight, murmuring silent. comforts.) 

Michelangelo Hamato has no right arm, even though Donnie promises to build him a mechanical one. He's performed various exercise to try to cope with phantom pains, but other than that he spends most of his time staring into space or talking to Ice Cream Kitty.

Shredder lost in some ways, he won in other ways, and now all they can do is pick up the pieces.

It's Karai of all people who saves them in the dark, ugly aftermath. She marches into the Lair with her arm in a cast and Shini on her heels, head high. They lower themselves to scrubbing bedpans and forcing food down reluctant throats; Karai hauls people to the bathroom in her surprisingly strong, serpentine arms.

April does her best to help, anything not to be left alone with her own thoughts. Donnie joins in sometimes, when he's not curled into a ball in the corner, weeping. They spend a lot of time in silent conversation, preferring the contents of each other's minds to their own.

"I think you'll walk again, without the mantras," Donnie says, as April peers at Leo's cast. "It won't be the same, but you might manage it."

"And Raph?" Leo asks. His brother is lying with a blanket pulled up over his head, refusing to talk to anyone until he gets another drink. No one has the energy to threaten him into submission right now--maybe later, when they can recruit Casey.

"Donnie and April can build a brace," Karai says firmly. "I can bring in some of the best spinal surgeons on the globe, at gunpoint if necessary. He'll be okay."

April doesn't know about that, but eventually Karai will shove a piece of paper into her hands anyway and tell Donnie that, "You've got ideas, you've always got ideas." And April does find ideas in Donnie's head, half-formed pictures and plans for how to pull his family back together,

Karai teaches Mikey how to walk unbalanced, the way she learned in the early days of her mutation when her arms kept switching species. Shini drags him into conversation again and again, going over the same topics on repeat, anything to keep him from forgetting how to talk.

They wake up screaming, all of them, almost every night--all except April, who has to rattle the frames of her bed instead. And Karai and Shini are there to comfort them, to pace from bed to bed saying _it's okay, you're save, it's over, he's dead_.

"I'm sorry I wasn't there," Karai whispers, stroking hair off April's sweaty forehead. "But I'll never leave again, I swear."

They go out for food runs, Karai dragging one turtle or another with her because she says she doesn't know how to distinguish the edible from the garbage. She walks holding Mikey's hand, lets Leo lean on her while he's getting the hang of Splinter's staff, bribing Raph with carefully measured amounts of booze so he'll let himself be carried or ride in the wheelchair she stole for him.

Shini marches April and Donnie out together and takes a picture of them "accidentally" holding hands for everyone else to giggle at. Sometimes they take along Casey if he's not busy with physical therapy, making sure to constantly pause to point things out or having arguments about signs so he doesn't feel like he's slowing them down.

They collect materials from the junkyard, too. Donnie asks April to rip up picture after picture. They snap at each other, Donnie pained at needing someone else to do so much of his beloved craft for him, and April frustrated at having to be the eyes and hands of someone who thinks so different from hers. One of their biggest squabbles is over the punishing pace Donnie sets himself too, and they end up sort of resolving it when Shini starts drugging Donnie's coffee whenever he's had enough.

But they make up, because they have no choice. They find things to agree or improve on, they make no diagrams, they start to work on prosthetics. They stick up metal bars around the lair so Raph and Leo can have something to hold onto when they make their way around. April learns to combine physical labor with her powers, until she can operate one piece of equipment with her mind while holding another in her hand. 

Raph uses those bars the day he hauls himself to the bathroom and slits his wrists in the tub. April wakes up from a dream of burying him next to Splinter and runs to the bathroom to throw up, only to find herself screaming for help in everyone's heads.

They pile around Raph, sobbing, begging him to stay. "You can't leave us," Donnie whispers, speaking for them as April glances at the bandages on Raph's wrists again and again, terrified of them coming true. "We love you; we've lost you much. We can't lose you too."

Everyone starts sleeping in a pile after that, keeping watch on each other, because you don't have to be an empath to recognize the kind of destructive sorrow that comes from calling yourself a _cripple_ or a _failure_ or _ruined._

They burn Shredder's remains and bury his ashes deep within the woods, out of sight of the farmhouse. It's an anti-funeral, a means of keeping someone from reviving him someday, which is just the sort of thing that might happen in their world.

"We're not going to let you defeat us," Leo says firmly, back high even though he's got a death grip on his father's staff. "We're stronger than you, _better_ than you in every way. You'll haunt us, but we won't give you the satisfaction of letting ourselves be destroyed."

Raph looks ashamed at that and Leo reaches over to squeeze his hand. "You've hurt us from the inside out, but we can heal," he adds. "Your legacy will be dust and ashes, and we're going to live full, happy lives taking care of each other. All you cared about was revenge when you were alive, but we are _so_ much more than that.

They head back to the farmhouse together, nobody looking back. Donnie leans on April, wearing from long hours of work on Mikey's arm, which is almost done back at the farmhouse. _Hell of a speech_ , she muses.

"Guess all that Captain Ryan really paid off." Donnie adds. April doesn't mention the pages of words, scribbled over repeatedly and thrown away, that she saw in the trash can. Leo puts a lot of effort into speeches that come off as on-the-stop.

She glances down at her hands, budding with new calluses from all the work she's been doing with Donnie's tools, and understands where he's coming from. Building a future takes work.

"It--it's beautiful," Mikey says, flexing and curving his new arm. "I--I thought it'd be all gears and stuff, but..." The arm has been carefully covered in layers of different green paint until it's a near-perfect match to the rest of his own skin.

"That was all April," Donnie adds, running his own fingers along the skin. "Really is something," he adds. From this angle, when you can't see the lack of holes in the purple cloth around his head, you might think he was look at through his own eyes.

April tilts her head, giving them both a better look. _How does it feel?_ she asks.

"Feels a little weird, here..." Mikey taps a point of the arm. April raises her hands as a screwdriver flickers into her hands and she and Donnie set about fixing it.

Raph glances over from where he's playing cards with Casey in a corner, a little stiff and awkward in his new brace, not to mention still in recovery from his latest surgery. His eyes are brighter than they've been in a while.

Same for Casey; today was a day when he didn't pick fights or try to push himself too hard, a day where he doesn't have to be kept away from the booze. A day when he squeezes Raph's hand and Raph squeezes back before they break out into gentle bickering about who's cheating.

Yes, it's a good day for everyone. There have been nightmares this week, and there might be nightmares tonight, but there were no nightmares tonight. April doesn't feel the all-too-familiar weight of sorrow in her mind or Donnie's, and when she extends her reach a little everyone she touches feels the same.

Outside, Shini and Karai spar while Leo fires arrow after arrow, his fingers a blur from long months of practice. The Mutanimals are there, too, with Slash, Rockwell, and Pete sunbathing while Leatherhead and Mondo anxiously wait for Mikey to come out and play.

Splinter watches them, his stone gaze quiet and wise. If he were here today, April thinks his eyes might be sparkling with hope.


	24. Xenophobia

Pop culture has provided them a bit of a guidebook about what it means to be, "hated and feared." But the X-Men had the advantage of being (mostly) exquisitely beautiful, of having godlike powers in the thousands instead of just the one. Besides, April's are usually more of a burden than a help, especially when she overhears her classmates cheering about the latest mutant-capture video, running little cracks through the corners of windows or shifting furniture ever so slightly until she has to go work out her emotions with her razor tongue and deadly fists.

The old days were easier, when humanity regulated them to the safe obscurity of tabloids and conspiracy. Now with two alien invasions, five years of war between two human-mutant groups, and EPF teams slinking around every other month under their belt, New York has shifted from disbelief to the far deadlier state of apprehension.

More people have guns these days, both in and out of the gentrified areas. People posts mutant sightings online; faked or real, they receive equally staggering amounts of hits. Life continues as it does, but with just another glance over the shoulder as citizens navigate dark streets, eyes narrowed for the monsters everyone knows are in the shadows.

The turtles are no strangers to hiding in the shadows, of course. Invisibility is the way of the ninja and the law of the mutant. It's strange, though, knowing that ordinary citizens are actively watching for you when all you've had to contend with are Foot members and Purple Dragons for so long.

As the consummate vigilante, Raph has it the worst and the best all at once. He's seen humans sob up at him with unfiltered gratitude, and he's seen them hiss venom, standing protectively over the person who just punched them in the face like they've somehow gained a common enemy. They scream at Casey too, wondering what horrors he must be hiding under his hoodie so that he'll fight alongside a monster.

Raph rages about it later, of course, complaining about the ungrateful bastards while Casey tosses back another drink and knows there's nothing he can say. But the fury in him has to go somewhere, or else he'll break himself on cold stone walls and drown in whiskey bottles.

So he heads back out to beat up more criminals and keep fighting for a city that hates him, actively sneaking out trouble in a way he knows his brothers think he should outgrow. He snarls back at the insults and treasures the smiles, keeps shining safely in his heart for the next time he finds himself with knuckles stained by his brothers' blood and self-loathing seeping his pores.

Eventually, inevitably, things go wrong. There are no hateful shouts to give a warning this time, from either side of the conflict. They're toying with the muggers, smacking them around a little, and don't look where one guy's skittering gun has gone. Raph takes his guy down and makes a new pose that he saw on WWE last week, forgetting to be the cool, slick vigilante in the heat of a moment as he grins like a child.

When the gun goes off it's _loud_ , so loud that Raph feels himself clapping his hands to his ears on instinct. He's been in combat for years, yeah, but most of that was accompanied by the fainter clang of blades and the soft whine of laser guns. Most people don't have _time_ to fire a regular weapon around him.

The ground seems to crawl out from under his feet and he twists as he falls, trying to figure out what's going on and why there's blood running down his leg. The gun fires again, and a dull _thud_ rings through his plastron as Raph topples backward.

From a distance he can hear Casey screaming, an inhuman sound that he's never heard his friend make before. Raph twists around, trying to find the danger, but his vision keeps blurring for some reason and _wow,_ why does his chest hurt so bad? Did he strain the cracked part again?

His vision tunnels on a man standing at the far end of the alley, a civilian in a business suit with a bruise on his face and a shaking gun in his hand. He's white (the most hateful ones often are, the ones who don't know about what it's means to be feared on sight), his face pale and drawn.

Their eyes meet, and whatever the man sees _(inhuman green glow, pupils all wrong,_ _spray of human blood across its face)_ causes his hand to steady, sight locking on Raph's face. Then a hockey puck detonates at his feet and he's staggering away, yelping. Raph lets a grunt and falls back, head thumping on the concrete as he realizes that his leg really hurts, too.

Casey wants revenge, wants to tear and break and bite and _destroy,_ rip this man apart like the animal he thinks Raph is. But the other half of his heart is bleeding out on the concrete, so instead he screams a curse and snatches Raph up in his arms. They flee into the night, Casey's tears and Raph's blood whipped away by the wind.

Casey crashes into the lair with their brother bleeding in his arms and everyone springs into action. Donnie dashes for the infirmary, barking orders and questions.Casey answers as best he can, staggering under Raph's weight until Leo relieves him and carries Raph into the infirmary. Casey tries to follow, his eyes blank with desperate love, and Mikey stalls him before he can follow Raph them in and potentially interrupt Donnie's precious concentration.

Then Leo staggers out of the lab, hands slick with blood. He waits outside the bathroom as Casey cleans off, pulling on a shirt that he left here last time and trying not to sniffle too loudly, before heading in after him. Then they're left to wait for Donnie to do his work. And wait. And wait. Casey and 

"What happened?" Leo finally asks, his voice hoarse with tears he won't dare to head. Mikey is already crying quietly, curled up besides him, while Casey sits before them feeling every inch the penitent.

"Some guy," he says honestly. "Not a Purple Dragon, not--just some guy in a suit. One of the muggers dropped his gun and we didn't see where he went. I...." And for the first time he looks down at his own shaking hands, as the tears staining his face pick up again. "I wasn't covering his back, I-- _fuck."_

"It's okay," Mikey says, leaning across to squeeze his hands. "It's not your fault. You're not supposed to be fighting off the _civilians."_ His words make perfect logical sense, but that doesn't make him any less believable. Casey squeezes back and can't meet Leo's eyes.

Eventually Mikey goes to work on dinner just to have something to do, and to seek comfort from Ice Cream Kitty. Leo mutters something about training and disappears into the dojo; Casey waits a few minutes before following, making sure to kick off his dirty boots at the door.

He watches Leo blur through a series of elaborate katas, his movements tight and abrupt with barely controlled fury. Raph or Casey would just lose themselves in punching bags and bloody brawls, cans of booze and streams of curses, but Leo is different. Or he tries to be.

Casey knows that Leo has grown to see him as a fellow warrior, a comrade in arms who's managed to prove himself as battle despite his completely lack of ninja training. He also knows that Leo thinks of him every time Raph drinks more than he's supposed to, knows that Leo blames him for encouraging Raph's vigilante habit.

 _He's not like us,_ Casey overheard him saying to Raph once, when they thought he wasn't there. _He doesn't take the same risks you do._ The words stung, especially because they were true, especially when Raph told Leo to go fuck himself.

Casey knows that Raph chooses every path he takes, good and bad, that Casey couldn't keep him from them even if he tried. It's one of the reasons he loves Raph so much.

It doesn't make the guilt any better.

"Wanna spar?" Casey asks. _Wanna take it out on me?_ is what he means.

Leo halts and looks at him, eyes flashing a burning blue in the dojo's soft light. "Are you sure?" he asks. _I won't hold back._

"Always," Casey says, flashing one of his devil-my-care grins as he raises his fists. _I don't care if you hurt me. I want to hurt._ Maybe it's unhealthy, but this is what he needs, and he thinks Leo gets it.

They go at it, and Casey puts on a pretty good show if he says so himself. If he'd brought any of his equipment or weapons into the dojo, he might even have won.

But Leo has been trained to fight since before he could walk properly, and practices with an intensity that Raph has never even tried to match. His blows fall with ruthless precision, no breaths wasted on taunts or showing off.

By the time they're done, Casey has a black eye, his chest is throbbing, and he'll be working the ache out of his shoulder for days. He's feeling a lot better.

"Good spar," Leo says, helping him up. _I forgive you._

"I was goin' easy on ya," Casey says as they leave the dojo. _Thank you._

They sit on the couch drinking water together, Casey with an ice pack, watching TV. Mikey finishes dinner and doesn't bother calling anyone to eat, just sticks it in the fridge and goes to sit with them.

They're still sitting there when Donnie arrives, swaying gently on his feet, to tell them that Raph's stable. That's when they finally let themselves crumble with relief.

Mutants can't try their luck in court, can't even protest. Donnie knows enough about human history to know that it took some groups a very long time to get even that far. For better or worse, his family has never been the waiting kind.

So while Mikey, Leo, and Casey sleep on cots by Raph's bedside, Donnie downs more coffee and starts going through CCTV cameras on his computer. Leo got Casey to tell him the place Raph was shot, and it's easy to calculate the time from there.

He can't see his brother fall, but he glimpses the flash of Casey's grenade from off-screen, followed by a cloud of smoke and a man running down the street, still clutching the gun. Enough evidence for the cops to convict, if they weren't just as likely to test the blood Raph left behind and congratulate the guy for getting rid of another subhuman instead.

Donnie switches from camera into camera, following the guy through the streets as his pace slows and he starts to relax. The man almost disappears into the endless bustle of New Yorkers, becoming one more shape in the crowd, but Donnie has a razor-sharp memory for details and manages to keep from losing him, even with a cameras that are dirty or damaged.

The man drops the gun in his briefcase before approaching his apartment, slipping inside. Donnie plugs the building's name into a program meant to collect the online names of its residence and runs through their social media profiles.

"That's him," Casey says when Donnie points at an image. And yes, he's sure.

Donnie shakes Leo awake to give him the address and Leo heads off to his room. He emerges with a black mask and a cloak with the hood raised, a getup that Casey might consider overkill if it didn't perfectly fit the cold, hungry look in his eyes.

"I'm coming with," Casey announces. Leo looks him up and down, from bruised face to boots, then turns away without a word. Donnie watches them go, expression dark in a way Casey hasn't seen since Don Vizioso disappeared.

They make their way through the night, Leo's cloak fluttering in the wind as he runs. Casey waits on the fire escape while Leo undoes the lock on the guy's window, after checking with Donnie to make sure they're in the right place.

He waits and watches as Leo slinks through the apartment's shadows, quiet as a reflection. He glances through door after door before finding the one he's looking for, vanishing from Casey's sight as he slips inside.

If Casey strains his ears, he can pix up the faintest hint of a scuffle. Then Leo pokes his head out the door and gives a short, sharp nod.

The man from earlier is bound and gagged, hands tied. There's a woman slumped next to him with her eyes rolled up in her head, blanket discreetly pulled up over her body. "She'll be all right," Leo says, and Casey doesn't know who he's talking to. His voice is so, so calm.

"Keep your voice down," Leo tells him. "There's a daughter down the hall." The man is screaming behind his gag, his voice muffled and desperate. Casey looks at him and feels the same blankness he did when he almost killed Shredder.

Leo draws a knife and the man screams louder, legs kicking frantically before Leo straddles them. "You didn't kill my brother," he says. "So I'm not going to kill you. But I won't let you hurt one of us again."

He grabs the man's clenched, flexing fists and carefully pulls a finger free. "You could have just run, if you were scared," he says, eyes a blank white behind the mask. "That's what most people do. But you didn't--you saw an opportunity, and you took it. And it didn't really matter if you were wrong, because it was _just an animal."_

Leo presses the knife into the man's skin and cuts deep, blood splashing over his hands. Casey bites his lip, trying to keep his gorge from rising. The man makes a sound like he's being flayed alive.

"My brother had a lot of nightmares before you," Leo continues conversationally. "You're just going to have one more. But you--you just got a whole new nightmare, bigger than anything you've ever seen. And if you try to seek revenge you'll just find more nightmares waiting."

The finger pops off. The man howls, the sheet darkening between his legs. Down the hall, Casey thinks he can hear a child rustling in her bed, disturbed by bad dreams.

"My brother likes to play the brute, but he can be gentle," Leo explains, wrapping the finger in plastic and tucking it into his belt. "He wants to protect things--people, animals, anyone in need. And he'll keep protecting people, keep throwing himself into fights, no matter how dangerous it is or how reasonable it is to stop. So I have to protect him."

Footsteps creak in the hall. Casey freezes.

"Dad?" It's a girl's voice, twelve or thirteen. His sister's age.

Leo leans closer, breathing into the man's ear: _"If you love her, you'll make her go away."_ He tugs off the gag.

The man spits, coughs out tears, raises his head. "Everything's fine, honey," he forces out. "It's just the radiator, it's on the fritz.."

"Something smells funny." The man winces, humiliation twisting onto his face. "It--it's fine," he says, the words shaking ever so slightly, to slightly for her to pick up on it. "I don't smell anything."

"Okay." Casey can hear the tension falling out of the girl as she heads back to bed. "Night, dad. Love you." She trusts him, why wouldn't she? Parents know everything. A parent never falters or steers you wrong.

(It's been a very, very long time since Casey has believed that).

"I love you, too," the man replies through gritted teeth. He opens his mouth to say something else, but Leo forces the gag back onto his face. "Thank you," he says, and it sounds like he means it. "No one will come after your family after this, I promise. You'll be safe."

Then he reaches for the other finger. The man fights harder this time, but loses all the same.

They don't bother looking for the gun when they go. Without his trigger fingers, it's useless to him anyway.

As they make their way back. Casey keeps glancing at the pouches of Leo's belt, thinking of what's inside. Leo had carefully bandaged the man's stumps after knocking him out, his face so set and businesslike.

"What are you going to do with it?" he asks.

Leo shrugs. "Give it to Raph if he wants, throw it in the river if he doesn't."

"Raph would want to take revenge himself," Casey reminds him.

"I know, but he might have lost control and gone too far," Leo says. "Of course, he might not have gone at all if he'd known there was a kid involved."

"And the Mutanimals?"

"They'd be careful if there was a kid, too," Leo says. "And if Slash wanted to do something anyway, Kurtzman would stop him. Slash may be the leader, but Kurtzman's the one with the money. He'll listen." There's no contempt there, only a calm statement of fact.

Casey nods, thinking. He doesn't ask if Leo would have hurt the girl if the guy had called for help, knows Leo would be insulted at the very suggestion. But still...

"They'll be afraid," he says. "The family, the people they know, everyone they talk to about this--they'll be more scared of mutants than ever." He always knew that, of course, but it's harder to ignore it now that Raph has actually been avenged.

"They were always going to be scared," Leo reminds him. "Things like this remind people like to flee from the things they fear instead of fighting." His eye flicker to Casey, who realizes they hasn't shifted back from white yet. "Do you have a problem with that?"

Casey looks away, out over the skyline. He thinks of Raph's blood staining his hands, of the pain and dim confusion in his shocked green eyes before he passed out, of the way the guy had looked Raph in the face and seen something worth killing. He thinks Raph struggling to recover the next through weeks and months, pushing himself too hard despite Leo and Donnie's warnings, the way he might struggle with flashes of pain or memory years down the line.

He thinks of other things, too--Mikey screaming behind a mask as they strap him to the table, the cold eyes of the soldiers holding him back, the way how every single one of New York's mayoral campaigns is running on the same "protection" campaign that's somehow supposed to shield New York from mutants.

Acceptance is not in the cards for the Hamatos, not this generation at least. Survival is. So that's the way it has to be for him.

"No," Casey says, and means it.

Leo smiles, his eyes shifting back to blue. He picks up his pace and Casey follows him, heading back beneath the city that hates and harbors them in equal measure, a city they will keep loving despite themselves.


	25. Yes

Their father says "yes" and the room goes silent for a heartbeat, eight eyes growing huge. No one _really_ believe he would answer that way, not deep down, not after fifteen straight years of refusal.

Topside is more of a concept than a place to them at this point, to be honest. It's where the books are written and the TV shows are filled, where the bags of food are half-eaten and the stay dogs are lost. It's where the carefully preserved and hidden magazines they pass around are made, where the naked women (and occasional men) live out their lives beyond the photoshoot.

It's shoes and tires glimpsed through a grate, the hum of voices that they strain to make out over roaring engines, yellow streams from drunks that they push each into, squealing. It's tree rots and flowers, the occasional flash of starts between the lights, blasting music with lyrics that taught them all their bad words. It's sensory impressions, not really somewhere you can _visit...._ right?

They're not completely naive, of course--they've heard Sensei's stories, they've read atlases and tour manuals, they've sat through the occasional news story when training and lessons were over and nobody's programs were on quite yet. But the topside in their heads is still a fantastical place, unmapped and explored, one where they might encounter princesses or dragons.

Needless to say, the prospect scares the shit out of them. Not that they'd ever acknowledge it in a million years, of course; they're _fifteen years_ old, fully grown in their own eyes, and everything is a competition to be the toughest, fiercest, bravest.

So they smile, they laugh, and they keep their feelings locked up inside.

Their father says "yes" and Raph's heart leaps. Now he'll _finally_ be able to run free, to find new asses to kick and new excuses to break things without getting in trouble. He won't have to stay down here day after day after fucking _day_ , with Leo's bossing and Donnie's babbling and Mikey's endless bitching and the dead rats they have to discreetly get rid of so Sensei doesn't have an existential crisis.

He'll breathe air that doesn't smell faintly of mold or Donnie's latest experiment, he'll be able to add to his collection of weights, and he'll _finally_ be able to get out of his father's hearing distance for the first time in _fifteen fucking years_. If he wants to try a cigarette or steal a magazine, he can just _do_ that instead of rifling for the trash for hours.

Of course, that means he'll still have to put up with humans. Raph's never been a fan of humans, all uncoordinated limbs and garbage left everywhere. They're too skinny, too noisy, leave too much trash and (sometimes literally) shit. The ones on TV always have too much makeup, even the guys, and the ones in books are blurry images when they try to picture them.

~~Not to mention how beautiful the ones on TV are, how perfectly formed, and as physically weak as they are a part of Raph might understand the power in their beauty, a power he'll never have.~~

But he'll put up with the humans if it means being free for once, even it's just for a couple hours at a time.

After all, it's not like he's _scared_ , right?

When their father says "yes," Donnie's heart stops beating. He wants to throw himself out of his chair and beg their father no, he changed his mind, they want to stay in the safe underground for a little while longer. Because Donnie remembers everything, and he remembers how dangerous the outside world can be, behind the promises of discovery and freedom.

You see, humans have a habit of casting the ugliest bits of themselves into the abyss. Donnie thinks of the needles they're not allowed to touch, the guns his father lectures them on before disposing of them, the occasional wet wads of dumped heroin or cocaine, the body that traumatized Raph and Leo. When they are six they found magazines containing images of strange pale things in weird positions; their father smacked them and burning the magazines before announcing they were _children_ like themselves, doing things no children should be expected to do.

Oh, Donnie knows that there are wonderful things in the world; he's read more and spent more time on the Internet than any of his brothers, after all. He knows about the glorious discoveries that have made the, about the wonders of Darwin and Curie, Tesla and Lovelace, his patron saints.

But he's also learned about the ugly things humanity are capable of, the slavery and the wars, the sins that still being carried out in the larger world. He knows about school shootings and animal testing and vivisections, about all the terrible atrocities humans have inflicted on each other over the most minuscule differences. And if that's what they do to _each other_ , what might happen to his brothers?

Logically, he understands that this place won't be enough to contain for long. He has so much more to _do,_ to explore, so many projects in his head that he could get down if he only had a few more resources, a more sustainable access to materials.

But he wonders...can't they spend a few more years down here in the dark? He's sure he can keep himself satisfied with robotic prototypes and hackathons until then. His brothers get banged up enough down here, and Donnie doesn't want to see what hurts they might run into on the surface.

Donnie mentally shakes himself and pushes the fears down, tries to focus on the curiosity that got him to vote for this ridiculous plan in the first place. It'll be fine, just _fine._ Besides, with any luck his brothers will destroy up a truck or something his father will ground them for a few more comforting years.

(His fear doesn't go away when he meets April O'Neil, but his urge to stay topside grows a thousand times stronger. The terrors just become problems he has no choice, but to survive or solve).

Leo wants to shout in excitement, but he's worried about throwing up in the process. This is his _home,_ the place of familiar routine, where he has his father to help whenever things go wrong. As the eldest, he'll be responsible for his brothers--a weight he's felt long before Sensei officially made him leader--and he'll be expected to protect them in a strange new environment.

The idea of exploration is as intoxicating as it is terrifying; this isn't _Space Heroes_ , after all, and instead of crossing a vast, orderly universe they'll have to navigate a confusing mess of a world where there are no Sky Command regulations to hold things together. Already, Leo has started to suspect that their father's lessons will only take them so far.

But Captain Ryan never shows fear, and neither does Leo. Instead he squares his shoulders, already trying to think of plans to keep Raph from losing control, and Donnie from messing with things he shouldn't, and Mikey from wandering off (plans that will fall to pieces five minutes in, but he doesn't know that yet).

Their father has honored them by declaring them mature enough to go outside, honored _Leo._ He will make himself worthy of that honor, whatever it takes.

Donnie looks a little tense, so Leo squeezes his hand and pretends that it's just his brother he's trying to comfort. 

Their father says "yes," and Mikey's overjoyed, because now he'll be able to smell the roses everybody talks about in books and leap around all he pleases without crashing into his brothers and starting his fight. And who knows, maybe he'll _finally_ get to eat something that isn't trash or algae or a stray dog, something _new._

Still, he finds himself glancing at his brothers, noticing the fears they think they hide so well. He sees the way Leo's jaw tightens at the announcement, the way Donnie's foot keeps tapping even as Leo squeezes his hand, the way Raph's eyes grow big even as his mouth curls into a triumphant smirk.

They're scared. And something that would scare _his brothers_ is enough to scare Mikey, enough to make him clench his toes under the table as they lay out their plans. He's always had a hard time distinguishing the so-called "real world" from the TV screen; both are places filled with confusing events and weird strangers the look nothing like him.

Entering the TV is kind of fun, he supposes, but also kind of scary, frightening because of the same craziness that makes it so exhilarating. If things go wrong up there, it'll be harder to run back to Dad than usual. They'll have to rely on each other, and Mikey's not quite sure he trust his _brothers,_ his weird, aggressive, leave-me-alone-Mikey brothers to watch his back (yet).

But they've been _trained_ for this, Mikey reminds himself, trained to protect themselves and each other in what they already knew was a dangerous world. They're mutant ninja turtle teens, their very existence is a miracle, they can do _anything._

He straightens his back, hoping sparking into his eyes, and doesn't bother studying his father's face because what else would he see, but boundless faith in them?  
  


Hamato Yoshi says "yes," and immediately wants to take it back. What is he _thinking,_ sending his children out into the world at this? A world he barely survived the first time alive, a world that chewed up his wife and child and spat them out?

His boys' eyes are still big and bright as the day of their mutation, their bodies bear so few scars. Oh, but the people they meet up there won't see that, they'll see a collection of scaly monstrosities, inhuman and unholy. They'll inspire fear if they're luck, draw violence if they're not.

Children are not meant to be kept in towers their whole lives, though. He can see how pent-up they are, how they have started to snap and snarl at each other over the last few months, bouncing around the confines of their little homes.

(He tries not to think of what Miwa would be at this age, demanding her own liberties. And she would have already grown up with so much more freedom than his sons have now, freedoms that Yoshi took for granted before he lost it, freedoms his boys have never even bothered to dream of)

Yoshi has trained them to be unobtrusive, to protect themselves. He has turned them into warriors, soldiers in an endless war for their own survival. Now all he can do is hope for it be enough.

~~He'd like to go with him, but the very thought makes him nauseous, because what if he returns home and everything is on fire? So he will wait, he will meditate, he will force himself to think of his fear as caution rather than the vicious mental scar it is.~~

He'll watch them go, brushing away a tear when he's sure none of them are looking back, and go to beg the ghosts of his family for their safety. _Take care of your brothers, Miwa,_ he'll beg his daughter. _They deserve to run wild, just like you should have._

On the other side of the globe, the girl Splinter thinks dead asks her father if the rumors are true, and she'll be sent to help build their business in America soon. He says, "Perhaps," and orders her to run through the kata again, his eyes noncommittal behind the Kuro Kabuto.

In a New York apartment, Casey Jones' little sister asks if he's going out and he says, "Yeah," careful to not let her see the face paint. He's still starting out on this, whatever "this" is, still a little nervous and unsure of himself.

His father doesn't ask anything at all, doesn't look from the TV. By the time the report comes on about the armed robber found disabled by what witnesses are calling an explosive hockey puck, he'll be fast asleep.

"I think we can swing it," her father says when April O'Neil wants to see _The Dark Knight Rises,_ and the Kraang track their location via security cameras, planning to strike while they're returning from the film.

Doors are opened, steps taken, journeys set in motion. The relatively peaceful little world in the sewers is about to be ripped open, spilling the outside world in like a tidal wave, and nothing will ever be the same again.


	26. Zealot

Leo knows what they think of him. _Daddy's favorite,_ they say. _Splinter Junior._ The obedient one, the _worshipful_ one, the one who jumps at every opportunity to be useful, the one who basks in the glow of the spotlight.

The words sting sometimes, even though they're right. He really does love his father, considers him worthy of every respect and honor. He made the decision to take in four squalling turtles when he could just have easily left them to die, didn't he? (When he was little, Leo had nightmares of him doing just that, although he made sure never to tell anyone)

Leo's always felt like he owes him for that in some way, even if the others don't feel the same. And if he has to owe anyone anything, he's grateful it's someone as wise and good as Master Splinter.

So yes, he is obedient. He does his level best to avoid making Sensei unhappy, he tries harder and pays better attention than anything else (when one of the others screw up, he can remind Sensei that they're still worth keeping around). He takes his punishments without complaints (and tries to take the ones for his brothers, who can't handle them as well).

When their father sniffs at them for failing on their missions, he forces down the urge to ask, _We're just kids, why didn't you come help us?_ When Splinter offers them maxims and metaphors instead of concrete advice, then disciplines them for not understanding, he doesn't wonder _Do you actually know the answer?_ When his father talks about sacrificing a member of your team for the fate of the world, he doesn't scream _It's not FAIR! Why is it all on our shoulders?_

He doesn't rebel; that's a task for the others. He is a _good son._

But even more than a good son, he strives to a good brother. He's the one who watched after the others in their younger, hungrier years, when their father still had to go out on long trips to look for food. He was the protector long before Splinter made them leader, and now looking after them is an all-consuming task.

Right now, he's failing.

The Foot have had Mikey for six days; the longest any of them have been in captivity before. Every attempt to storm Foot headquarters has ended miserably; Raph has a broken leg and had to be physically shackled to the bed before he learned he wouldn't be returning to fight without Donnie's say so, Leo's has a bad cut on his shoulder that'll leave an ugly scar, Donnie's face is covered in bruises, Casey's got cracked ribs, and April's recovering from a concussion.

Shredder has learned his lesson from past defeats, sealing every exit and turning their building into an impenetrable stronghold. Some of the repurposed Kraang technology Donnie's found might be able to take it down completely, but they'd take Mikey with it (and besides they don't kill, according to the very strict orders of their father, a father who hasn't come along on a single rescue mission, just shakes his head in razor-edged disappointment when they come home empty-handed).

Leo and Donnie are staking out Foot headquarters on the sixth night when Tiger Claw appears out of nowhere, a box in his hands. "I am not here to fight, cubs," he purrs, eyes twinkling with amusement as they go for their weapons. "My master has simply sent me to deliver a message." He tosses the box at their feet with a _thump._ "Make of it what you will."

Donnie examines the package from the outside while Leo covers his back, ascertaining it's not a bomb. He opens it and they both glimpse a tangle of photographs inside, a flash of green skin and achingly familiar blue eyes....Leo slams the box shut, almost closing it on Donnie's fingers in the process.

He snatches it up and runs, runs, runs as if he can get away what it's holding, Donnie shouting on his heels. Leo pictures Tiger Claw watching them from a distance, laughing at the sight.

"You have to let me look at it," Donnie says as they stagger into the Lair, both panting. "If he's hurt, I need to see..."

"Look at what?" Raph asks, hobbling out of the kitchen on his crutches. Leo can see he's had another meltdown again and smashed up the dining chairs (Splinter was meditating, didn't do anything to stop him, these days it seems whenever his brothers lose their shit it's entirely Leo's problem) but he doesn't care right now.

"Nothing," Leo says, striding for his room. The box is on fire is on fire in his hands and he needs to rip the bandaid off, needs to see what's inside _now_ because if he doesn't do it now he'll never have the strength and then one of the others will try to look themselves...

" _Leo--"_

He shuts the door, locks it, tosses the box on his bed. His hands shake when he pulls it open, squeezing his eyes closed as he reaches for a bundle of photos and undoes the ribbon. With an effort Leo forces them open, forces them to look at what's been happening to his little brother.

He has to clap his hands over his mouth so the others don't hear him scream.

Mikey on his knees. Mikey on his back. Mikey suspended with his hands over his head, snarling through his gag--oh, how hard he'd fought. Mikey bleeding and bruised, bruised in the most intimate places. Mikey forced into one humiliating position after another, positions that reminded Leo of the porn magazines he and his brothers used to pass around, only the people in those magazines never wept like that _._

In most of the pictures, Mikey had something in him or...someone. A lot of someones, in different places. Leo could see that his attackers were a mix of human and mutant, could even recognize a few of them, but Mikey was the focus. The star of the fucking show. And the tools they were using...fuck, Leo couldn't even _name_ most of them.

Leo's head is buzzing, almost painfully. His fingers are shaking. He's wishing for someone to pound on the door, to distract him with a demand to see, but deep down he suspects they're happy for an excuse not to face this, and he hates them more than he should for that.

There's another bundle of photos, one Leo doesn't even dare to touch, and...a letter, wrapped around a hard drive. It's written in careful kanji, the letters ruthlessly precise, and Leo doesn't need to read the dramatic signature at the bottom to tell who it's from.

 _The Shredder wants the rat's head in return for their youngest, if you still want him._ The words shake and dance before his eyes.

From a distance, he sees himself take the hard drive and plug it into the computer Donnie got him for Christmas (okay, he's not _totally_ useless with technology, he's figured out to save fan fiction and he's seen enough movies to know how a hard drive works). It's stupid and cruel of him to do this to himself, not to mention Mikey, but a part of him is hoping that the drive will somehow have an explanation for all this, make it _not be._

He tugs on the headphones as the video uploads, zooming in on a pale, shaking, turtle strapped to a bed. He's splattered with his own semen and the cum of others, and his eyes are unrecognizable. There's a voiceover, he thinks it might be Bradford, and the words curl in Leo's ears like smoke.

Leo watches the video for five minutes before dashing out of his room to puke, almost breaking the lock in the process. Then he has to dash back in before any else musters the courage to look, slamming the door behind him again.

He curls on himself, shaking, staring at the flickering screen of a computer that got smashed at some point. _Your fault, your fault,_ a voice screams in his head. _Weak loser traitor stupid selfish pathetic monstrous._ Terrible words, but nothing compared to what they were saying about Mikey, what they were....

"Leonardo?"

 _Shit shit shit._ Leo almost topples off the bed with an unleaderly shriek, photos flying everywhere. Of course Splinter would hear the racket, of course he would choose now to ~~slink out of~~ emerge from his room and of _course_ Leo would be too fucking stupid to lock his door the second time.

His father bends to pick up one of the photos that skittered at his feet, moving at once too fast for Leo to stop him and slowly, far too slowly. "Don't--" he gasps out, but Splinter's eyes are already locked on the picture. It's one of the uglier ones, and that's saying something.

For a few minutes Sensei just stands there, twitching. His jaw twitches, and from his father that's a howl of pain. Leo holds his breath, waiting for him to crumble, waiting for him to lash out with snarls of condemnations.

Finally, the photo flutters back to the floor and he speaks.

"It is a pity," he says, words stiff and carefully controlled, "That you were not able to reach your brother in time, before his disgrace."

_What?_

"What?"

"Speak to your brothers," his father says. "There will be no more rescue missions, no more blood wasted on someone who has betrayed us so severely. Tomorrow we will mourn Michelangelo as a warrior should be mourning, and then we will do our best to move on."

"You--you're shitting me," Leo forces out. His father raises an eyebrow, and Leo knows that if his brothers were listening in right now (they're not, thank God, Donnie must be busy dragging Raph back from the edge) he'd hear their gasps. He _never_ talks back to Splinter, ever, and he certainly doesn't _curse._

But a part of Leo is crumbling, and he couldn't stop himself if he tried. "You--Mikey's being _tortured_ , because of _us,_ and you want to just give up on him?" He's panting, shaking, can barely get enough oxygen to speak. "That's _insane--"_

His father's tail cracks across his face, sharp and brutal. It's the first time he's received such a punishment in years, and Leo can barely hold back a squeak as he staggers backward, clutching his cheek.

"I thought you had grown beyond such childish displays of disrespect," Splinter growls, his voice shaking with suppressed rage. The words would hurt if they weren't almost drowned out by the ringing in Leo's head.

"Get rid of this...filth," his father says, and sweeps out of the room without another word, shutting the door firmly behind him.

Leo collapses to his knees. The world's rocking under his feet and _he can't breathe._

_Disgrace._

A photo shreds between his fingers. Another. Another.

_Disgrace._

The already-ruined laptop shatters on the wall.

_Disgrace._

The hard drive shatters in his hands.

 _Disgrace_.

 _"Don't come in!"_ he screams when someone knocks on the door. His voice is unfamiliar, terrifying even to him, and he's not surprised when whoever's there makes their exit as quickly as possible.

_Disgrace_

His brother trapped, hurt, broken, tangled in the twisted fantasies and perverted desires of adults who'd been playing with him like a new toy.

 _Disgrace_.

He's suffocating on dry land, curled in on himself, vibrating so hard he thinks he might shake apart, breathless screaming inside Mikey Mikey _Mikey._

_Disgrace._

_Disgrace._

_Disgrace._

Sometimes snaps inside him.

Leo feels himself go very still.

His body relaxes as the shaking goes away, as precious air rushes into his lungs. His eyes flicker open from where they'd somehow squeezed shut, and he's lying with his cheek pressed against the floor, staring at nothing and everything.

He _breathes._

And all of a sudden everything makes sense.

_Disgrace._

"Father?" Leo nudges at the door, tea tray steady in his hands.

His father sighs. "What is it, Leonardo?"

"I...I wanted to apologize, for being so disrespectful earlier. I brought you some tea."

A beat--Leo tenses--than his father rises, robe rustling across the floor. "Very well." The door creaks open and Leo enters his father's room with a bow, the way he always does. He's spent so much time here; for punishment, for storytelling, for advice useful and useless.

Leo kneels in his accustomed place and sets out the tea with grace and skill--nothing approaching a full-blown tea ceremony, but enough flourish for his father to appreciate. Splinter kneels in front of him and studies the tray, eyes winking like dark jewels in the candlelight.

"It smells different," his father muses, tracing the edge of his cup. It's one of his favorites, one of the few heirlooms brought back from Japan.

"I've been trying some new herbs," Leo replies easily. He and his father both blow on the tea, waiting for it to cool. The steam brushes against Leo's cheek, still tender despite liberal application of the icepack.

"Did you get rid of it?" They both know what Splinter's referring to.

" _Hai,_ Sensei." He'd dumped it all into a trash can at the dump, doused it in gasoline, and lit the match, tears trickling down his cheeks that weren't just from the smoke.

Splinter nods, face inscrutable behind the whiskers. "Well?" he asks simply.

Leo grits his teeth slightly, but slides into a bow, forehead touching the floor, the picture of perfect submission. "My behavior was...irrational, and unworthy of a leader. I offer you my deepest apologies, and humbly request your forgiveness." His voice sounds so courtly and formal; the words somehow sound like a stranger's even though he's been saying variations of them throughout his life.

"I accept," Splinter says, every inch the benevolent ruler. And that's what he is, isn't he? The master of this little underground kingdom they've built--and, to be honest, the one best suited for the job. The wisest of them all, the most experienced.

As tired and angry as he feels, despite all the mistakes his father's made, Leo still loves Splinter. Will always love him, no matter what.

He sits back up and watches his father take a sip of tea, eyes narrowed in concentration. "It's good," he says, thoughtful. "A little sweet. You should take more care with the herbs next time."

" _Hai_ , Sensei," Leo repeats, taking a sip of his own tea. It tastes like acid and dead things.

"I know that the loss of Michelangelo stings," Splinter says, taking another sip. "It is all right to mourn, to lash out."

 _He's not dead,_ Leo wants to scream, to sob. He doesn't. He keeps himself carefully controlled as he (almost) always does, stays the perfect son.

His father is still talking between sips. "With all the...troubles our clan has had lately," he says, gesturing to his and his son's forms like they're just embarrassing inconveniences, "It's important that we do not falter in retaining our honor. By allowing himself to take part in such displays, rather than trying his utmost to resist and escape, Michelangelo has tarnished that honor."

_He did fight. He did. Didn't you notice? Didn't you see?_

"It will take an effort to cleanse ourselves, but we will persist," Splinter continues, as if he can't even hear the shrieking in Leo's head. "We will not allow Saki--or Michelangelo--to manipulate us from afar. And there will be _no_ rescue attempts on the sly, not again." His eyes burn into Leo. "Understand?" Leo doesn't trust him to speak anymore, so he just nods.

He takes yet another sip, the tea winking on his tongue. "Have you spoken to your brothers about the new way of things?"

Leo says nothing. He can't.

His father's eyes narrow with still more disappointment. "I see. Then I will have to speak to them to--tomorrow." He frowns, cocking his head. "I...Is there something wrong with the heating system? I...I feel..."

"Donnie didn't say anything," Leo replies, studying his father carefully. Are his hands shaking?

"I...." His father tries to take another sip of tea, but the cup quivers in his hands. "There's something...."

The cup slips from his hand and Leo's hands blur out to catch it. "Sensei!" Splinter topples with a groan, and Leo barely manages to grab him before his head hits the floor.

His father sucks in a gasp, face drawn and pained. "G-get Donatello..." His feet jerk across the floor, flexing and shaking. "I-I think..."

"Hush," Leo murmurs, lowering him onto the bed. "It'll be over soon."

Splinter's eyes snap to him, registering Leo's face--the faint glitter of tears in his eyes, the cold set of his jaw. "Wh-what?"

Here is a truth:

Leo loves his father. Leo would fight for him, bleed for him, maybe even die and kill for him. But he does not _worship_ him.

He worships his brothers, though. In his eyes, nothing is more important than keeping them happy, keeping them _safe._ It's a task he performs with all the desperate fervor of a holy warrior, and he'd rip the world apart to see it through.

Ripping his own heart out of his chest? Carving off a piece of his soul? Betraying his father, as flawed and myopic as that father can be, in the worst way possible?

It's worth. 

"It's okay," Leo whispers, to Splinter and himself and the brother he _will_ rescue, no matter what. "It's all right, Sensei. Just breathe deep and close your eyes."

" _No."_ His father tries to sit up, but his muscles lock and fold on themselves, sending back to the mat with a low groan. "N-no, Leonardo..." The betrayal, the fear, the _hurt_ in his eyes is like nothing Leo's ever seen from him, and he shivers at the sight--but he doesn't look away, or go for help.

"It was a gift from Karai, a long time ago," he says. "She gave it to me in case I ever wanted to switch clans. I threw it away--I was disgusted--but then..." He'd dug through the shadows once he'd assured himself it was gone, pulling out the little bag of leaves and sticking it in his pouch. "I thought it might be a useful weapon one day."

Splinter lunges, a hand closing around Leo's throat, but his grip spasms and his arms slithers back to the ground. "T-traitor," he hisses, foam glittering on his lips. "Son of a _whore..._ " Leo flinches at the words, but pushes the pain away. He'll have time to break later.

" _Rin,"_ his father hisses. _"Pyo..."_ Leo wraps a gentle hand around his muzzle, clamping it shut. "You can't do that," he chides. "I'm sorry, Father." His father struggles for a second, then his head falls back with a hopeless groan.

"I won't give Mikey up," Leo whispers, running a soft finger across the fur on his father's temples. "I...I love you, Sensei. I always will. But I love my brothers more. And Mikey's not going to spend a _day_ longer in that place."

"Kil--kill you..." Splinter grits out, eyes rolling wildly in his head. "Watch you _burn..."_ His head falls back with a groan.

"I'm sorry," Leo whispers, swallowing down a sob. "I--I'm so sorry, Sensei." He lies down besides his father and pulls him close, stroking his fur. "It's gonna be okay. You'll see Tang Shen again and I'll take care of Miwa, I promise..."

 _Quick,_ Karai said, and it is quick. His father doesn't say anything after that, just shakes, and after a few minutes he is dead.

Leo lies there for a few minutes longer, staring at nothing. Then he gets to work. He takes the poisoned cup off the tray and sets it near his father's hand, along with a bundle of letters plucked from his pocket. He was up for hours working on them, working off a practice sheet of kanji drawn up by his father, long ago. That sheet one of his most prized possessions.

He burned into with the hard drive and the photographs of Mikey.

He takes the tray away and puts it in the kitchen sink, then goes to quietly cry in the shower. Once he's assured himself there are no red marks on his eyes, he curls up on his bed again, gazing into the darkness with a fist jammed into his mouth.

"You burned them?" Donnie asks at breakfast next morning, when they're all standing around at the table (Donnie had had to drag a chair in for Raph, but hadn't bothered to get ones for himself or Leo) poking at soggy lumps of cereal.

"You can examine Mikey injuries when we get him back," Leo says firmly.

"If we get him back," Raph mutters. Leo ignores the obvious attempt to start a fight and takes another bite of cereal, the food ashy in his mouth. He hasn't really tasted anything since Mikey was taken. (He's not sure he'll be able to taste after they get Mikey back)

"Where's Splinter?" Donnie wonders. "I didn't see him in the dojo." His eyes flicker over Leo's face, not quite landing on the bruise. He'd asked Leo if he'd used an icepack and said no more, his usual routine for whenever their father left one of them with a visible wound.

"Dunno," Raph mutters. Their father rarely ate meals with them these days, but they could usually find him meditating at this hour. It was rare for him not be out of bed by now.

"I'll go check on him," Leo says, after letting the silence draw out for a few more awkward seconds. He makes his way to his father's room, steps unhurried without seeming reluctant.

Leo had half-expected his father to be asleep or awake; perhaps he had dreamed the whole thing, perhaps Splinter had somehow managed to overcome the poison. But no, his father is stiff and cold when he arrives.

Leo kneels by his side, being into his wide-open eyes, at the foam crusted around his mouth. He sits there for a few seconds, peering down at his all-powerful, indestructible father laid low.

Then he throws his head back and lets out the scream he's been holding in for so long.

"I--I should have _known,"_ Leo sobs later, real tears dripping down his face as he and his brothers sob in each other's arms. It's not a lie; there are so many things he should have known--how to keep Mikey safe, how to change his father's mind, how to get out of this without staining his hands with blood.

He'll never know those things. Not now, not after Donnie's attempts at CPR not failed, not while their father's body is lying limp and still on the floor. Raph's face is tight with pain as he cries, from tripping on his crutches as he raced to Leo's side, and it hurts Leo to look at him now.

"I--I b-brought hi-him his _tea_ ," he stutters. "H-he s-seemed fine...." Also not a lie.

"It's all right," Donnie whispers, voice hoarse from his own crying, trying to comfort himself by comforting someone else (Leo knows how that works, he's done it so many times). "It's not your fault, Leo, you didn't know. No one could have..."

They cry for a little while longer, and then they drag themselves together, because they have a brother that still needs them. And they turn to Sensei's letters.

There are ones for each turtle, even Mikey. Sensei tells them proud he is of them, talks about all the different ways in which he loves them and all the things he loves them for, apologize for his past standoffishness, orders them to not feel guilty about what he's done, reminds them that rats have short lifespans and he is honored to end his in this way.

 _I am so proud of how hard you work on your self-control,_ he tells Raph. _Your intelligence is a gift to us, just like you,_ he tells Donnie. _What those men did to you is not your fault, how your body reacted is not your fault, and my decision to save you is not your fault,_ he tells Mikey.

 _I love you, and I know that you will take care of your brothers, and I am so sorry to put all this responsibility on your shoulders,_ he tells Leo (Leo had to write something for himself so his brothers wouldn't be suspicious).

He writes everything they ever wanted to hear from him. And he writes something else, too. A plan that is far too ruthless and pragmatic for their father, but that's not what his brothers notice, not what makes them drop the letter like it's burned.

"We can't," Raph whispers, shaking his head, fresh tears sparkling in his eyes. "We _can't,_ it, it's fucking _insane."_

"We--I think we have to," Leo whispers, squeezing his hand.

"It's _barbaric,"_ Donnie spits out.

"I know," Leo murmurs, stroking his shell. "I know. But this is what Sensei wanted. And we have..." He draws in a rattling breath. "We have to save Mikey. Whatever it takes."

There was a number with the letter, a way of contacting Tiger Claw when they were ready for the "exchange." They park the Shellraiser in front of Foot Clan headquarters and wait. Donnie still smells of vomit from throwing up all over himself, and Raph clutches the steering wheel like he's going to break it. Leo scans the surrounding street for potential attackers, fingers drumming lightly on his thighs.

The Foot emerge from the shadows, hands on their weapons, tense and ready. Leo slides open the door and steps out to meet them, a plastic bag in hand. He's forbidden Raph and Donnie to engage in any way, and they're too deep in shock to resist right now.

Shredder's helmet gleams like a crown in the low light; he's a king attended by his court, with hungry look from the construction site is back on his eyes. A small figure stumbles along at his side, hands shackled behind his shell and a leash leading from his collared throat to Shredder's hand. Something is buckled under his bowed head, and he's long since lost his mask.

"Is it done?" Shredder asks. Leo grits his teeth before reaching into the bag and pulling out his father's head. Splinter's eyes stare at nothing, dried blood flecked around the edges of his cauterized stump.

Holding his head of his dead father--his first victim--in his hands, Leo feels nothing. He hadn't felt anything when he cut the head off, either. It had taken an effort to shed a few tears afterward, so the others wouldn't realize just how numb he felt.

"Butchered by his own brats, then?" The Shredder lets out a faint snicker. "I couldn't have given him a more pathetic ending myself." Leo clenches his jaw, but doesn't take the bait.

"Give him back," he growls. Shredder could attack them right now, of course, but then he might not get the head intact, and Leo's gambling that he'd want it as a trophy...

"Very well," Saki replies. He tosses Mikey's leash to Tiger Claw, who drags him through the crowd. They whisper lewd things to him, patting his shell and sides in mocking goodbye, and Mikey seems about to fall over from the flinching. Leo bites his lip bloody, the head shaking in his hand.

"Good job, cub," Tiger Claw says, holding out the leash. He was in a lot of the pictures, even more than Shredder. Leo would like to gouge his eyes out. He contents himself with a "Go fuck yourself," shoving the head into his paw.

Then he's guiding his brother into the back of the Shellraiser, torn between bone-crushing relief from _finally having him back_ and nausea at how thin Mikey feels, at the bruises swirling across his skin and the ugly welts on his shell. His brother slumps down on himself, head still bowed, as Raph hits the gas and they squeal out of there before the Foot change their minds.

Donnie works on the cuffs while Leo lifts their little brother's chin, desperate to see his eyes again. "It's all right, Mikey, you're--" His breath catches.

There's a ball gag shoved in Mikey's mouth and his face is spattered with multiple layers of cum. His eyes flicker with fear and he lets out a muffled whimper, curling his head back into his chest.

"Shhhh, shhhh, it's all right," Leo says, trying to keep the panic out of his voice as he unbuckles the gag and flips the catches on the collar, tossing both out the window. "It's okay, sweetheart, you're safe."

Donnie passes him a wet wipe and Leo dabs at Mikey's face, both wincing when it brushes against the rainbow of bruises. The cuffs come free with a click and Mikey lifts his hands slowly, as if he doesn't quite remember how to use them, letting out a soft sigh as he rubs at his wrists.

"Where does it hurt?" Donnie asks, carefully dabbing at the pus weeping from a cut on Mikey's shoulder.

Their brother glances around and Leo moves back, trying to give him as much space as he can."I...." His voice is a harsh rasp, and Leo tries not to shiver at the sound.

He squirms, and that's when Leo hears the buzzing. His eyes drop to the bottom of Mikey's plastron, and the small bulge that has formed there. His brother leans back with a groan, face slack with humiliation. There's something made of dark plastic between his legs; Leo bites down a wave of nausea.

 _"Fuck,"_ Donnie breathes in Japanese, and Mikey stiffens. "No, it's okay," Donnie adds quickly. "Just..." He and Leo both turn away, and Raph tries to pretend he's not staring in the review mirror.

There's some shifting and whimpering, and then the buzzing grows louder, ringing painfully in the enclosed. "Here," Mikey shoves the toy at him, slick with lubricant, and Leo throws it out of the van with such force he thinks he might have broken a window. He doesn't care.

By the time he turns back around Mikey's already sobbing, and Donnie's biting his lip as he works, in a desperate attempt not to join in. A soft pool of fluids is seeping out of Mikey, staining his thighs, and Leo can fucking _hear_ those fuckers chortling as they _fill the little whore up for his big brothers._

"It's okay," he says yet again, reaching out, but Mikey flinches away. "Okay, um..." Leo reaches for his undamaged shoulder. "Is this good?" Mikey doesn't respond, but neither does he pull.

Donnie presses something into his hand and Leo relaxes as his hand closes around it. "Mikey?" he asks, holding up the detonator. "Do you want to use this?"

His brother's eyes narrow. "What is it?"

"It's how we're going to get rid of the people who hurt you," Leo says. "Keep them from hurting any of us, every again."

Mikey hesitates, then takes the detonator and studies it, chewing his lip in concentration. He leans forward and plants a soft kiss on Leo's cheek, before pressing the button.

They're safely out of range of the explosion, but they can still feel it ripple through the air, vibrating up through the Shellraiser's tires. Leo knows how much it hurt Donnie to carefully hollow out their father's severed head and plant it with explosives, but looking in his brothers' bright eyes he also knows that was worth.

Mikey lets his head fall back, staring at the ceiling, and Leo curls up besides him, keeping one hand resting on his shoulder. "We'll check the wreckage later, make sure there weren't any survivors," he says, although they all known there won't be any.

Raph drives, Donnie works, and Leo lets Mikey quietly cry on him as they drive home together.

Behind them, the past burns.

"You did it, didn't you?"

Leo stiffens. It's the day after they buried Sensei, when everybody's still hanging out at the farmhouse in a daze. The others--Raph, Donnie, April, Casey, Karai, some girl Karai brought back from Japan--are still inside, no doubt sick of looking at the statue of Sensei out by the brook. Leo certainly is.

But Mikey doesn't want to go inside, and this is one of the rare moments when physical contact doesn't make him shiver or instinctively open his legs. So Leo's sitting out here with him, his little brother's head propped in his lab. Mikey peers up at the birds, his eyes ringed with heavy black bags.

Physically, Mikey has been healing well. Mentally, well....he wakes up screaming almost every night, twitches at sudden noises, goes for hours or days without speaking. He's spilled pieces of his time in captivity to all of them, and whenever he hears a twisted new bit of information Leo has to go and look at the burned remains of Shredder's helmet (skull fused inside) to assure himself it really is all over.

But he's _alive_ , which means he has to heal, however slowly it takes. And his brothers is prepared to stay at his side for as long as he needs.

The others aren't handling that well either, Leo supposes. Raph's still breaking things, which at least gives Donnie stuff to fix. As for Leo, he's doing his best to hold his new family together, help them heal, honor his father's memory. He's still playing the good son, and he thought he was doing a pretty decent job....

At least until Mikey said what he said.

"Did what?" Leo asks carefully.

"You know what," Mikey says, peering up at him. "The letter Splinter wrote was all wrong--he _never_ would have understood what they did. And you, you would have kept the others from seeing the pictures. Once Splinter saw them, and he would have, he would've given up on me."

Leo stiffens. "What happened to you wasn't your fault, Mikey."

Mikey shrugs, shoulders rustling in the grass. "I tell myself that every day, and sometimes I believe it. But Sensei never would've. You know what he was like: so traditional, so ticked off even by little mistakes."

"Mikey...."

"Don't worry," his brother says, reaching up to caress Leo's cheek. "I won't tell, unless you want me to. I think the others would understand if they knew, too. I mean, they _loved_ Splinter, but they didn't like him very much."

Leo frowns, and Mikey smiles up at him. "C'mon, Leo, you know what he was like. I mean, yeah, he was _good,_ but he wasn't good _for_ us."

Leo would like to say Mikey's wrong. He can't.

He looks up and in the distance, out over the water, he thinks he might see the faint outline of a rat.

"Do you regret it?" Mikey asks.

Does he wake up shaking some nights, tears in his eyes? Yes. Does he avoid the family shrine like the plague? Yes. Does he sometimes drink tea and imagine the taste of poison in his mouth? Yes.

Does he _regret_ it?

"No," Leo says, and the rat crumbles into dust.

Mikey hums, adjusting his position. "I don't think we just had a funeral for him," he muses. "I think we had a funeral for us, for who we were before"

Leo reaches out and brushes the water with a finger, watching their reflections ripple and shift. "Who do you think we're becoming?" he asks, as the river flowers dance.

"Survivors," Mikey says, squeezing Leo's hand. "And that's all we'll ever need to be."

Leo plants a kiss on his little brother's forehead and breathes in his sweet scent, mixed with the smell of the food he's recently started to make again, which is some of the best food Leo's ever tasted. He thinks Mikey is right.

They sit there together and watch the sun rise, waiting for the future to come, and knowing they'll do whatever it takes to endure it.


End file.
